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COPYKIGUT Dl^J^OSIT 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN EDITION 

VOLUME 15 

THE CHRONICLES 

OF AMERICA SERIES 

ALLEN JOHNSON 

EDITOR 

GERHARD R. LOMER 

CHARLES W. JEFFERYS 

ASSISTANT EDITORS 



JEFFERSON 
AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

A CHRONICLE OF 

THE VIRGINIA DYNASTY 

BY ALLEN JOHNSON 



LVXET 



LVXET 




NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1921 






Copyright, 1921, by Yale University Press 



m 20 1921 

0)C!.A622'176 



^ 



n^ 



CONTENTS 

I. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT Page 1 

II. PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER REPUBLI- 
CAN TACK " 19 

III. THE CORSAIRS OF THE MEDITERRA- 

NEAN " 35 

IV. THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL " 58 
, V. IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS " 76 

VI. AN AMERICAN CATILINE " 102 

VII. AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY " 128 

VIII. THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 " 144 

IX. THE LAST PHASE OF PEACEABLE 

COERCION " 170 

X. THE WAR-HAWKS " 189 

XI. PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE " 213 

XII. THE PEACEMAKERS " 239 

XIII. SPANISH DERELICTS IN THE NEW 

WORLD " 265 

XIV. FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY " 286 
XV. THE END OF AN ERA " 308 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 319 

INDEX " 331 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Painting by Rembrandt Peale, 1803. In the 
collection of the New York Historical Society. 
Charles Henry Hart says it is the best ex- 
ample of Rembrandt Peales work. Frontispiece 

MONTICELLO. VIRGINIA, THE HOME OF 
JEFFERSON 

Photograph by H. P. Cook, Richmond, 

Virginia. " " 32 

ALBERT GALLATIN 

Painting by Gilbert Stuart. In the Metro- 
politan Museum of Art, New York. " " 160 

JAMES MONROE 

Painting by John Vanderlyn, 1822. In the 
City Hall, New York. Owned by the Cor- 
poration. Reproduced by courtesy of the 
Municipal Art Commission of the City of 
New York. " " 256 

JAMES MADISON, AGED 82 

Engraving by T. B. Welch after a drawing 
from life by J. B. Longacre, at Montpelier, 
1833. In The National Portrait Gallery of 
Distinguished Americans. " " 30 It 



IX 



JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 



CHAPTER I 

PRESIDENT Jefferson's court 

The rumble of President John Adams's coach had 

hardly died away in the distance on the morning of 

March 4, 1801, when Mr. Thomas Jefferson entered 

the breakfast room of Conrad's boarding house on 

Capitol Hill, where he had been living in bachelor's 

quarters during his Vice-Presidency. He took his 

usual seat at the lower end of the table among the 

other boarders, declining with a smile to accept the 

chair of the impulsive Mrs. Brown, who felt, in 

spite of her democratic principles, that on this day 

of all days Mr. Jefferson should have the place 

which he had obstinately refused to occupy at the 

head of the table and near the fireplace. There 

were others besides the wife of the Senator from 

Kentucky who felt that Mr. Jefferson was carrying 

1 



2 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

equality too far. But Mr. Jefferson would not 
take precedence over the Congressmen who were 
his fellow boarders. 

Conrad's was conveniently near the Capitol, on 
the south side of the hill, and commanded an ex- 
tensive view. The slope of the hill, which was a 
wild tangle of verdure in summer, debouched into 
a wide plain extending to the Potomac. Through 
this lowland wandered a little stream, once known 
as Goose Creek but now dignified by the name of 
Tiber. The banks of the stream as well as of the 
Potomac were fringed with native flowering slirubs 
and graceful trees, in which Mr. Jefferson took 
great delight. The prospect from his drawing- 
room windows, indeed, quite as much as anything 
else, attached him to Conrad's. 

As was his wont, Mr. Jefferson withdrew to his 
study after breakfast and doubtless ran over the 
pages of a manuscript which he had been preparing 
with some care for this Fourth of March. It may 
be guessed, too, that here, as at Monticello, he made 
his usual observations — noting in his diary the 
temperatiu*e, jotting down in the garden-book 
which he kept for thirty years an item or two about 
the planting of vegetables, and recording, as he 
continued to do for eight years, the earliest and 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 3 

latest appearance of each comestible in the Wash- 
ington market. Perhaps he made a few notes 
about the "seeds of the cymbling {cucurhita ver- 
meosa) and squash {cucurhita melopipo) " which 
he purposed to send to his friend Philip Mazzei, 
with directions for planting; or even wrote a letter 
full of reflections upon bigotry in politics and re- 
ligion to Dr. Joseph Priestley, whom he hoped soon 
to have as his guest in the President's House. 

Toward noon Mr, Jefferson stepped out of the 
house and walked over to the Capitol — a tall, 
rather loose-jointed figure, with swinging stride, 
symbolizing, one is tempted to think, the angular- 
ity of the American character. "A tall, large- 
boned farmer," an unfriendly English observer 
called him. His complexion was that of a man 
constantly exposed to the sun — sandy or freckled, 
contemporaries called it — but his features were 
clean-cut and strong and his expression was always 
kindly and benignant. 

Aside from salvos of artillery at the hour of 
twelve, the inauguration of Mr. Jefferson as Presi- 
dent of the United States was marked by extreme 
simplicity. In the Senate chamber of the unfin- 
ished Capitol, he was met by Aaron Burr, who 
had already been installed as presiding oflScer, and 



4 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

conducted to the Vice-President's chair, while that 
debonair man of the world took a seat on his right 
with easy grace. On INIr. Jefferson's left sat Chief 
Justice John Marshall, a "tall, lax, lounging Vir- 
ginian," with black eyes peering out from his 
swarthy countenance. There is a dramatic quality 
in this scene of the President-to-be seated between 
two men who are to cause him more vexation of 
spirit than any others in public life. Burr, bril- 
liant, gifted, ambitious, and profligate; Marshall, 
temperamentally and by conviction opposed to the 
principles which seemed to have triumphed in the 
election of this radical Virginian, to whom indeed 
he had a deep-seated aversion. After a short 
pause, Mr. Jefferson rose and read his Inaugural 
Address in a tone so low that it could be heard by 
only a few in the crowded chamber. 

Those who expected to hear revolutionary doc- 
trines must have been surprised by the studied 
moderation of this address. There was not a Fed- 
eralist within hearing of Jefferson's voice who could 
not have subscribed to all the articles in this pro- 
fession of political faith. " Equal and exact justice 
to all men" — "a jealous care of the right of elec- 
tion by the people" — "absolute acquiescence in 
the decisions of the majority" — "the supremacy 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 5 

of the civil over the military authority" — "the 
honest payments of our debts" — "freedom of 
religion" — "freedom of the press" — "freedom 
of person under the protection of the habeas cor- 
pus" — what were these principles but the bright 
constellation, as Jefferson said, "which has guided 
our steps through an age of revolution and reforma- 
tion?" John Adams himself might have enun- 
ciated all these principles, though he would have 
distributed the emphasis somewhat dift'erently. 

But what did Jefferson mean when he said, "We 
have called by different names brethren of the 
same principle. We are all Republicans — we are 
all Federalists." If this was true, what, pray, be- 
came of the revolution of 1800, which Jefferson had 
declared "as real a revolution in the principles of 
om- government as that of 1776 was in its form.''" 
Even Jefferson's own followers shook their heads 
dubiously over this passage as they read and re- 
read it in the news-sheets. It sounded a false note 
while the echoes of the campaign of 1800 were still 
reverberating. If Hamilton and his followers were 
monarchists at heart in 1800, bent upon overthrow- 
ing the Government, how could they and the 
triumphant Republicans be brethren of the same 
principle in 1801? 



6 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

The truth of the matter is that Jefferson was 
holding out an olive branch to his political oppo- 
nents. He believed, as he remarked in a private 
letter, that many Federalists were sound Republi- 
cans at heart who had been stampeded into the 
ranks of his opponents during the recent troubles 
with France. These lost political sheep Jefferson 
was bent upon restoring to the Republican fold by 
avoiding utterances and acts which would offend 
them. "I always exclude the leaders from these 
considerations," he added confidentially. In short, 
this Inaugiu-al Address was less a great state paper, 
marking a broad path for the Government to follow 
under stalwart leadership, than an astute effort to 
consolidate the victory of the Republican party. 

Disappointing the address must have been to 
those who had expected a declaration of specific 
policy. Yet the historian, wiser by the march of 
events, may read between the lines. When Jeffer- 
son said that he desired a wise and frugal govern- 
ment — a government " which should restrain men 
from injuring one another but otherwise leave 
them free to regulate their own pursuits — " and 
when he announced his purpose "to support the 
state governments in all their rights" and to culti- 
vate "peace with all nations — entangling alliances 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 7 

with none," he was in effect formulating a policy. 
But all this was in the womb of the future. 



It was many weeks before Jefferson took up his 
abode in the President's House. In the interval 
he remained in his old quarters, except for a visit 
to Monticello to arrange for his removal, which 
indeed he was in no haste to make, for "The Pal- 
ace," as the President's House was dubbed satiri- 
cally, was not yet finished ; its walls were not fully 
plastered, and it still lacked the main staircase — 
which, it must be admitted, was a serious defect 
if the new President meant to hold coiu-t. Besides, 
it was inconveniently situated at the other end 
of the straggling, unkempt village. At Conrad's 
Jefferson could still keep in touch with those mem- 
bers of Congress and those friends upon whose ad- 
vice he relied in putting "our Argosie on her Re- 
publican tack," as he was wont to say. Here, in 
his drawing-room, he could talk freely with prac- 
tical politicians such as Charles Pinckney, who had 
carried the ticket to success in South Carolina and 
who might reasonably expect to be consulted in 
organizing the new Administration. 

The chief posts in the President's official house- 
hold, save one, were readily filled. There were 



8 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

only five heads of departments to be appointed, 
and of these the Attorney-General might be de- 
scribed as a head without a department, since the 
duties of his oflBce were few and required only his 
occasional attention. As it fell out, however, the 
Attorney-General whom Jefferson appointed, Levi 
Lincoln of Massachusetts, practically carried on 
the work of all the Executive Departments until 
his colleagues were duly appointed and commis- 
sioned. For Secretary of War Jefferson chose an- 
other reliable New Englander, Henry Dearborn of 
Maine. The naval portfolio went begging, per- 
haps because the navy was not an imposing branch 
of the service, or because the new President had 
announced his desire to lay up all seven frigates in 
the eastern branch of the Potomac, where "they 
would be under the immediate eye of the depart- 
ment and would require but one set of plunderers 
to look after them . ' ' One conspicuous Republican 
after another declined this dubious honor, and in 
the end Jefferson was obliged to appoint as Secre- 
tary of the Navy Robert Smith, whose chief quali- 
fication was his kinship to General Samuel Smith, 
an influential politician of Maryland. 

The appointment by Jefferson of James Madison 
as Secretary of State occasioned no surprise, for the 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 9 

mtimate friendship of the two Virginians and their 
long and close association in politics led every one to 
expect that he would occupy an important post in 
the new Administration, though in truth that 
friendship was based on something deeper and 
finer than mere agreement in politics. "I do be- 
lieve," exclaimed a lady who often saw both men in 
private life, "father never loved son more than Mr. 
Jefferson loves Mr. Madison." The difference in 
age, however, was not great, for Jefferson was in his 
fifty-eighth year and Madison in his fiftieth. It 
was rather mien and character that suggested the 
filial relationship. Jefferson was, or could be if he 
chose, an imposing figure; his stature was six feet 
two and one-half inches. Madison had the ways 
and habits of a little man, for he was only five 
feet six. Madison was naturally timid and retiring 
in the presence of other men, but he was at his best 
in the company of his friend Jefferson, who valued 
his attainments. Indeed, the two men supplement- 
ed each other. If Jefferson was prone to theorize, 
Madison was disposed to find historical evidence 
to support a political doctrine. While Jefferson 
generalized boldly, even rashly, Madison hesitated, 
temporized, weighed the pros and cons, and came 
with diflBculty to a conclusion. Unhappily neither 



10 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

was a good judge of men. When pitted against a 
Bonaparte, a Talleyrand, or a Canning, they ap- 
peared provincial in their ways and limited in their 
sympathetic understanding of statesmen of the 
Old World. 

Next to that of Madison, Jefferson valued the 
friendship of Albert Gallatin, whom he made Sec- 
retary of the Treasury by a recess appointment, 
since there was some reason to fear that the Federal- 
ist Senate would not confirm the nomination. The 
Federalists could never forget that Gallatin was a 
Swiss by birth — an alien of supposedly radical 
tendencies. The partisan press never exhibited its 
crass provincialism more shamefully than when it 
made fun of Gallatin's imperfect pronunciation of 
English. He had come to America, indeed, too 
late to acquire a perfect control of a new tongue, 
but not too late to become a loyal son of his 
adopted country. He brought to Jefferson's group 
of advisers not only a thorough knowledge of pub- 
lic finance but a sound judgment and a statesman- 
like vision, which were often needed to rectify the 
political vagaries of his chief. 

The last of his Cabinet appointments made, 
Jefferson returned to his country seat at Monticello 
for August and September, for he was determined 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 11 

not to pass those two "bilious months" in Wash- 
ington. "I have not done it these forty years," 
he wrote to Gallatin. "Grumble who will, I will 
never pass those two months on tidewater." To 
Monticello, indeed, Jefferson turned whenever his 
duties permitted and not merely in the sickly 
months of summer, for when the roads were good 
the journey was rapidly and easily made by stage 
or chaise. There, in his garden and farm, he found 
relief from the distractions of public life. "No 
occupation is so delightful to me," he confessed, 
"as the culture of the earth, and no culture com- 
parable to that of the garden." At Monticello, 
too, he could gratify his delight in the natural sci- 
ences, for he was a true child of the eighteenth 
century in his insatiable curiosity about the physi- 
cal universe and in his desire to reduce that uni- 
verse to an intelligible mechanism. He was by 
instinct a rationalist and a foe to superstition in 
any form, whether in science or religion. His in- 
defatigable pen was as ready to discuss vaccina- 
tion and yellow fever with Dr. Benjamin Rush 
as it was to exchange views with Dr. Priestley on 
the ethics of Jesus. 

The diversity of Jefferson's interests is truly 
remarkable. Monticello is a monument to his 



12 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

almost Yankee-like ingenuity. He writes to his 
friend Thomas Paine to assure him that the semi- 
cylindrical form of roof after the De Lorme pattern, 
which he proposes for his house, is entirely practic- 
able, for he himself had "used it at home for a 
dome, being 120° of an oblong octagon." He was 
characteristically American in his receptivity to 
new ideas from any source. A chance item about 
Eli Whitney of New Haven arrests his attention 
and forthwith he writes to Madison recommending 
a "Mr. Whitney at Connecticut, a mechanic of the 
first order of ingenuity, who invented the cotton- 
gin," and who has recently invented "molds and 
machines for making all the pieces of his [musket] 
locks so exactly equal that take one hundred locks 
to pieces and mingle their parts and the hundred 
locks may be put together as well by taking the first 
pieces which come to hand." To Robert Fulton, 
then laboring to perfect his torpedoes and sub- 
marine, Jefferson wrote encouragingly: "I have 
ever looked to the submarine boat as most to be 
depended on for attaching them [i. e., torpedoes] 
... I am in hopes it is not to be abandoned as 
impracticable." 

It was not wholly affectation, therefore, when 
Jefferson wrote, "Nature intended me for the 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 13 

tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my 
supreme delight. But the enormities of the times 
in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part 
in resisting them, and to commit myself on the 
boisterous ocean of political passions." One can 
readily picture this Virginia farmer-philosopher 
ruefully closing his study door, taking a last look 
over the gardens and fields of Monticello, in the 
golden days of October, and mounting Wildair, 
his handsome thoroughbred, setting out on the 
dusty road for that little political world at Wash- 
ington, where rumor so often got the better of rea- 
son and where gossip was so likely to destroy 
philosophic serenity. 

Jefferson had been a widower for many years; 
and so, since his daughters were married and had 
households of their own, he was forced to preside 
over his menage at Washington without the femi- 
nine touch and tact so much needed at this Amer- 
ican court. Perhaps it was this unhappy circum- 
stance quite as much as his dislike for ceremonies 
and formalities that made Jefferson do away with 
the weekly levees of his predecessors and appoint 
only two days, the First of January and the Fourth 
of July, for public receptions. On such occasions 



14 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

he begged Mrs. Dolly Madison to act as hostess; 
and a charming and gracious figure she was, casting 
a certain extenuating veil over the President's 
gaucheries. Jefferson held, with his many politi- 
cal heresies, certain theories of social intercourse 
which ran rudely counter to the prevailing eti- 
quette of foreign courts. Among the rules which 
he devised for his republican court, the precedence 
due to rank was conspicuously absent, because he 
held that "all persons when brought together in 
society are perfectly equal, whether foreign or 
domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office." 
One of these rules to which the Cabinet gravely 
subscribed read as follows: 

To maintain the principles of equality, or of pele 
mele, and prevent the growth of precedence out of 
courtesy, the members of the Executive will practise at 
their own houses, and recommend an adherence to the 
ancient usage of the country, of gentlemen in mass 
giving precedence to the ladies in mass, in passing from 
one apartment where they are assembled into another. 

The application of this rule on one occasion gave 
rise to an incident which convulsed Washington 
society. President Jefferson had invited to dinner 
the new British Minister Merry and his wife, the 
Spanish Minister Yrujo and his wife, the French 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 15 

Minister Pichon and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Madison. When dinner was announced, Mx. Jef- 
ferson gave his hand to Mrs. Madison and seated 
her on his right, leaving the rest to straggle in as 
they pleased. Merry, fresh from the Court of St. 
James, was aghast and affronted; and when a few 
days later, at a dinner given by the Secretary of 
State, he saw Mrs. Merry left without an escort, 
while Mr. Madison took Mrs. Gallatin to the table, 
he believed that a deliberate insult was intended. 
To appease this indignant Briton the President was 
obliged to explain oflScially his rule of "pele mele"; 
but Mrs. Merry was not appeased and positively 
refused to appear at the President's New Year's 
Day reception. "Since then," wrote the amused 
Pichon, "Washington society is tiu-ned upside 
down; all the women are to the last degree exas- 
perated against Mrs. Merry; the Federalist news- 
papers have taken up the matter, and increased the 
irritations by sarcasms on the administration and 
by making a burlesque of the facts." Then Merry 
refused an invitation to dine again at the Presi- 
dent's, saying that he awaited instructions from his 
Government; and the Marquis Yrujo, who had 
reasons of his own for fomenting trouble, struck an 
alliance with the Merrys and also declined the 



16 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

President's invitation. Jefferson was incensed at 
their conduct, but put the blame upon Mrs. Merry, 
whom he characterized privately as a "virago who 
has already disturbed our harmony extremely." 

A brilliant English essayist has observed that a 
government to secure obedience must first excite 
reverence. Some such perception, coinciding with 
native taste, had moved George Washington to 
assume the trappings of royalty, in order to sur- 
round the new presidential office with impressive 
dignity. Posterity has, accordingly, visualized the 
first President and Father of his Country as a 
statuesque figure, posing at formal levees with a 
long sword in a scabbard of white polished leather, 
and clothed in black velvet knee-breeches, with 
yellow gloves and a cocked hat. The third Presi- 
dent of the United States harbored no such illu- 
sions and affected no such poses. Governments 
were made by rational beings — "by the consent 
of the governed," he had written in a memorable 
document — and rested on no emotional basis. 
Thomas Jefferson remained Thomas Jefferson after 
his election to the chief magistracy; and so con- 
temporaries saw him in the President's House, an 
unimpressive figure clad in "a blue coat, a thick 
gray -colored hairy waistcoat, with a red underwaist 



PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S COURT 17 

lapped over it, green velveteen breeches, with pearl 
buttons, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the 
heels." Any one might have found him, as Senator 
Maclay did, sitting "in a lounging manner, on one 
hip commonly, and with one of his shoulders ele- 
vated much above the other," a loose, shackling 
figure with no pretense at dignity. 

In his dislike for all artificial distinctions between 
man and man, Jefferson determined from the out- 
set to dispense a true Southern hospitality at the 
President's House and to welcome any one at any 
hour on any day. There was therefore some point 
to John Quincy Adams's witticism that Jefferson's 
"whole eight years was a levee." No one could 
deny that he entertained handsomely. Even his 
political opponents rose from his table with a com- 
fortable feeling of satiety which made them more 
kindly in their attitude toward their host. "We 
sat down at the table at four," wrote Senator 
Plumer of New Hampshire, "rose at six, and 
walked immediately into another room and drank 
coffee. We had a very good dinner, with a pro- 
fusion of fruits and sweetmeats. The wine was 
the best I ever drank, particularly the champagne, 
which was indeed delicious." 

It was in the circle of his intimates that Jefferson 



18 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

appeared at his best, and of all his intimate friends 
Madison knew best how to evoke the true Jefferson. 
To outsiders Madison appeared rather taciturn, 
but among his friends he was genial and even lively, 
amusing all by his ready humor and flashes of wit. 
To his changes of mood Jefferson always responded. 
Once started Jefferson would talk on and on, in a 
loose and rambling fashion, with a great deal of ex- 
aggeration and with many vagaries, yet always 
scattering much information on a great variety of 
topics. Here we may leave him for the moment, in 
the exhilarating hours following his inauguration, 
discoursing with Pinckney, Gallatin, Madison, 
Burr, Randolph, Giles, Macon, and many another 
good Republican, and evolving the policies of his 
Administration. 



CHAPTER II 

PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER REPUBLICAN TACK 

President Jefferson took office in a spirit of ex- 
ultation which he made no effort to disguise in his 
private letters. "The tough sides of our Argosie," 
he wrote to John Dickinson, "have been thoroughly 
tried. Her strength has stood the waves into which 
she was steered with a view to sink her. We shall 
put her on her Republican tack, and she will now 
show by the beauty of her motion the skill of her 
builders." In him as in his two intimates, Gallatin 
and Madison, there was a touch of that philosophy 
which colored the thought of reformers on the eve 
of the French Revolution, a naive confidence in the 
perfectability of man and the essential worthiness 
of his aspirations. Strike from man the shackles 
of despotism and superstition and accord to him a 
free government, and he would rise to unsuspected 
felicity. Republican government was the strongest 
government on earth, because it was founded on 

19 



20 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legiti- 
mate desires of men. Only one thing was wanting 
to make the American people happy and prosper- 
ous, said the President in his Inaugural Address: 
"a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain 
men from injuring one another, which shall leave 
them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits 
of industry and improvement, and shall not take 
from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." 
This, he believed, was the sum of good government; 
and this was the government which he was deter- 
mined to establish. Whether government thus re- 
duced to lowest terms would prove adequate in a 
world rent by war, only the future could disclose. 
It was only in intimate letters and in converse 
with Gallatin and Madison that Jefferson revealed 
his real purposes. So completely did Jefferson 
take these two advisers into his confidence, and so 
loyal was their cooperation, that the Government 
for eight years has been described as a triumvirate 
almost as clearly defined as any triumvirate of 
Rome. Three more congenial souls certainly have 
never ruled a nation, for they were drawn together 
not merely by agreement on a common policy but 
by sympathetic understanding of the fundamental 
principles of government. Gallatin and Madison 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 21 

often frequented the President's House, and there 
one may see them in imagination and perhaps catch 
now and then a fragment of their conversation : 

Gallatin: We owe much to geographical posi- 
tion; we have been fortunate in escaping foreign 
wars. If we can maintain peaceful relations with 
other nations, we can keep down the cost of admin- 
istration and avoid all the ills which follow too 
much government. 

The President: After all, we are chiefly an agri- 
cultural people and if we shape our policy accord- 
ingly we shall be much more likely to multiply and 
be happy than as if we mimicked an Amsterdam, 
a Hamburg, or a city like London. 

Madison (quietly) : I quite agree with you. We 
must keep the government simple and republican, 
avoiding the corruption which inevitably prevails 
in crowded cities, 

Gallatin (pursuing his thought): The moment 
you allow the national debt to mount, you entail 
burdens on posterity and augment the operations 
of government. 

The President (bitterly) : The principle of spend- 
ing money to be paid by posterity is but swin- 
dling futurity on a large scale. That was what 
Hamilton 



22 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Gallatin: Just so; and if this administratioi; 
does not reduce taxes, they will never be reduced. 
We must strike at the root of the evil and avert 
the danger of multiplying the functions of govern- 
ment. I would repeal all internal taxes. These 
pretended tax-preparations, treasure-preparations, 
and army-preparations against contingent wars 
tend only to encourage wars. 

The President {nodding his head in agreement): 
The discharge of the debt is vital to the destinies of 
our government, and for the present we must make 
all objects subordinate to this. We must confine 
our general government to foreign concerns only 
and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all 
other nations, except as to commerce. And our 
commerce is so valuable to other nations that they 
will be glad to purchase it, when they know that all 
we ask is justice. Why, then, should we not re- 
duce our general government to a very simple or- 
ganization and a very unexpensive one — a few 
plain duties to be performed by a few servants .^^ 

It was precisely the matter of selecting these few 
servants which worried the President during his 
first months in office, for the federal offices were 
held by Federalists almost to a man. He hoped 
that he would have to make only a few removals: 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 23 

any other course would expose him to the charge 
of inconsistency after his complacent statement 
that there was no fundamental difference between 
Republicans and Federalists. But his followers 
thought otherwise; they wanted the spoils of vic- 
tory and they meant to have them. Slowly and re- 
luctantly Jefferson yielded to pressure, justifying 
himself as he did so by the reflection that a due 
participation in office was a matter of right. And 
how, pray, could due participation be obtained, if 
there were no removals? Deaths were regrettably 
few; and resignations could hardly be expected. 
Once removals were decided upon, Jefferson drifted 
helplessly upon the tide. For a moment, it is true, 
he wrote hopefully about establishing an equili- 
brium and then returning "with joy to that state of 
things when the only questions concerning a candi- 
date shall be: Is he honest.'' Is he capable? Is 
he faithful to the Constitution?" That blessed 
expectation was never realized. By the end of his 
second term, a Federalist in office was as rare as a 
Republican under Adams. 

The removal of the Collector of the Port at New 
Haven and the appointment of an octogenarian 
whose chief qualification was his Republicanism 
brought to a head all the bitter animosity of 



24 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Federalist New England . The hostility to Jefferson 
in this region was no ordinary political opposition, 
as he knew full well, for it was compounded of many 
ingredients. In New England there was a greater 
social solidarity than existed anywhere else in the 
Union. Descended from English stock, imbued 
with common religious and political traditions, and 
bound together by the ties of a common ecclesiasti- 
cal polity, the people of this section had, as Jeffer- 
son expressed it, " a sort of family pride." Here all 
the forces of education, property, religion, and re- 
spectability were united in the maintenance of the 
established order against the assaults of democ- 
racy. New England Federalism was not so much 
a body of political doctrine as a state of mind. 
Abhorrence of the forces liberated by the French 
Revolution was the dominating emotion. To the 
Federalist leaders democracy seemed an aberration 
of the human mind, which was bound everywhere 
to produce infidelity, looseness of morals, and po- 
litical chaos. In the words of their Jeremiah, Fisher 
Ames, "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never 
to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only 
visions of hell." So thinking and feeling, they had 
witnessed the triumph of Jefferson with genuine 
alarm, for Jefferson they held to be no better than 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 25 

a Jacobin, bent upon subverting the social order and 
saturated with all the heterodox notions of Voltaire 
and Thomas Paine. 

The appointment of the aged Samuel Bishop as 
Collector of New Haven was evidence enough to 
the Federalist mind, which fed upon suspicion, that 
Jefferson intended to reward his son, Abraham 
Bishop, for political services. The younger Bishop 
was a stench in their nostrils, for at a recent cele- 
bration of the Republican victory he had shocked 
the good people of Connecticut by characterizing 
Jefferson as "the illustrious chief who, once in- 
sulted, now presides over the Union," and compar- 
ing him with the Saviour of the world, "who, once 
insulted, now presides over the universe." And 
this had not been his first transgression: he was 
known as an active and intemperate rebel against 
the standing order. No wonder that Theodore 
Dwight voiced the alarm of all New England Fed- 
eralists in an oration at New Haven, in which he 
declared that according to the doctrines of Jacobin- 
ism "the greatest villain in the community is the 
fittest person to make and execute the laws." "We 
have now," said he, "reached the consummation of 
democratic blessedness. We have a country gov- 
erned by blockheads and knaves." Here was an 



26 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

opposition which, if persisted in, might menace the 
integrity of the Union. 

Scarcely less vexatious was the business of 
appointments in New York where three factions in 
the Republican party struggled for the control of 
the patronage. Which should the President sup- 
port .^^ Gallatin, whose father-in-law was promi- 
nent in the politics of the State, was inclined to 
favor Burr and his followers; but the President al- 
ready felt a deep distrust of Burr and finally sur- 
rendered to the importunities of DeWitt Clinton, 
who had formed an alliance with the Livingston 
interests to drive Burr from the party. Despite 
the pettiness of the game, which disgusted both 
Gallatin and Jefferson, the decision was fateful. It 
was no light matter, even for the chief magistrate, 
to offend Aaron Burr. 

From these worrisome details of administration, 
the President turned with relief to the preparation 
of his first address to Congress. The keynote was 
to be economy. But just how economies were ac- 
tually to be effected was not so clear. For months 
Gallatin had been toiling over masses of statistics, 
trying to reconcile a policy of reduced taxation, to 
satisfy the demands of the party, with the dis- 
charge of the public debt. By laborious calculation 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 27 

he found that if $7,300,000 were set aside each year, 
the debt — principal and interest — could be dis- 
charged within sixteen years. But if the unpopular 
excise were abandoned, where was the needed 
revenue to be found? New taxes were not to be 
thought of. The alternative, then, was to reduce 
expenditures. But how and where. '^ 

Under these circumstances the President and his 
Cabinet adopted the course which in the light of 
subsequent events seems to have been woefully ill- 
timed and hazardous in the extreme. They deter- 
mined to sacrifice the army and navy. In extenua- 
tion of this decision, it may be said that the danger 
of war with France, which had forced the Adams 
Administration to double expenditures, had passed ; 
and that Europe was at this moment at peace, 
though only the most sanguine and shortsighted 
could believe that continued peace was possible in 
Europe with the First Consul in the saddle. It was 
agreed, then, that the expenditures for the military 
and naval establishments should be kept at about 
$2,500,000 — somewhat below the normal appro- 
priation before the recent war -flurry; and that 
wherever possible expenses should be reduced by 
careful pruning of the list of employees at the 
navy yards. 



28 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Such was the programme of humdrum economy 
which President Jefferson laid before Congress. 
After the exciting campaign of 1800, when the pub- 
lic was assured that the forces of Darkness and 
Light were locked in deadly combat for the soul of 
the nation, this tame progi'amme seemed like an 
anticlimax. But those who knew Thomas Jeffer- 
son learned to discount the vagaries to which he 
gave expression in conversation. As John Quincy 
Adams once remarked after listening to Jefferson's 
brilliant table talk, "Mi-. Jefferson loves to excite 
wonder." Yet Thomas Jefferson, philosopher, was 
a very different person from Thomas Jefferson, 
practical politician. Paradoxical as it may seem, 
the new President, of all men of his day, was the 
least likely to undertake revolutionary policies; 
and it was just this acquaintance with Jefferson's 
mental habits which led his inveterate enemy, 
Alexander Hamilton, to advise his party associates 
to elect Jefferson rather than Burr. 

The President broke with precedent, however, in 
one small particular. He was resolved not to fol- 
low the practice of his Federalist predecessors and 
address Congress in person . The President's speech 
to the two houses in joint session savored too much 
of a speech from the throne; it was a symptom of the 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 29 

Federalist leaning to monarchical forms and prac- 
tices. He sent his address, therefore, in writing, 
accompanied with letters to the presiding officers 
of the two chambers, in which he justified this 
departure from custom on the ground of con- 
venience and economy of time. "I have had prin- 
cipal regard," he wrote, "to the convenience of the 
Legislature, to the economy of their time, to the re- 
lief from the embarrassment of immediate answers 
on subjects not yet fully before them, and to the 
benefits thence resulting to the public affairs." 
This explanation deceived no one, unless it was the 
writer himself. It was thoroughly characteristic 
of Thomas Jefferson that he often explained his 
conduct by reasons which were obvious after- 
thoughts — an unfortunate habit which has led his 
contemporaries and his unfriendly biographers to 
charge him with hypocrisy. And it must be ad- 
mitted that his preference for indirect methods of 
achieving a purpose exposed him justly to the re- 
proaches of those who liked frankness and plain deal- 
ing. It is not unfair, then, to wonder whether the 
President was not thinking rather of his own conven- 
ience when he elected to address Congress by written 
message, for he was not a ready nor an impressive 
speaker. At all events, he established a precedent 



30 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

which remained unbroken until another Democratic 
President, one hundred and twelve years later, re- 
turned to the practice of Washington and Adams. 

If the Federalists of New England are to be be- 
lieved, hypocrisy marked the presidential message 
from the very beginning to the end. It began w^ith 
a pious expression of thanks "to the beneficent 
Being" who had been pleased to breathe into the 
warring peoples of Europe a spirit of forgiveness 
and conciliation. But even the most bigoted Fed- 
eralist who could not tolerate religious views difiFer- 
ing from his own must have been impressed with 
the devout and sincere desire of the President 
to preserve peace. Peace! peace! It was a sen- 
timent which ran through the message like the 
watermark in the very paper on which he wrote; 
it was the condition, the absolutely indispensable 
condition, of every chaste reformation which he 
advocated. Every reduction of public expenditure 
was predicated on the supposition that the danger 
of war was remote because other nations would de- 
sire to treat the United States justly. "Salutary 
reductions in habitual expenditures" were urged in 
every branch of the public service from the diplo- 
matic and revenue services to the judiciary and the 
naval yards. War might come, indeed, but "sound 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 31 

principles would not justify our taxing the industry 
of our fellow-citizens to accumulate treasure for 
wars to happen we know not when, and which 
might not, perhaps, happen but from the tempta- 
tions offered by that treasure." 

On all concrete matters the President's message 
cut close to the line which Gallatin had marked 
out. The internal taxes should now be dispensed 
with and corresponding reductions be made in "our 
habitual expenditures." There had been unwise 
multiplication of federal offices, many of which 
added nothing to the efficiency of the Government 
but only to the cost. These useless offices should 
be lopped off, for "when we consider that this 
Government is charged with the external and mu- 
tual relations only of these States, ... we may 
well doubt whether our organization is not too 
complicated, too expensive." In this connection 
Congress might well consider the Federal Judiciary, 
particularly the courts newly erected, and "judge 
of the proportion which the institution bears to the 
business it has to perform."^ And finally, Con- 

" The studied moderation of the message gave no hint of Jeffer- 
son's resolute purpose to procure the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 
1801. The history of this act and its repeal, as well as of the at- 
tack upon the judiciary, is recounted by Edward S, Corwin in 
John Marshall and the Constitution in The Chronicles of America. 



32 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

gress should consider whether the law relating to 
naturalization should not be revised. "A denial of 
citizenship under a residence of fourteen years is 
a denial to a great proportion of those who ask 
it"; and "shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives 
from distress that hospitality which savages of 
the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in 
this land?" 

The most inveterate foe could not characterize 
this message as revolutionary, however much he 
might dissent from the policies advocated. It was 
not Jefferson's way, indeed, to announce his inten- 
tions boldly and hew his way relentlessly to his 
objective. He was far too astute as a party leader 
to attempt to force his will upon Republicans in 
Congress. He would suggest; he would advise; he 
would cautiously express an opinion; but he would 
never dictate. Yet few Presidents have exercised 
a stronger directive influence upon Congress than 
Thomas Jefferson during the greater part of his 
Administration. So long as he was en rapport with 
Nathaniel Macon, Speaker of the House, and with 
John Randolph, Chairman of the Committee on 
Ways and Means, he could direct the policies of 
his party as effectively as the most autocratic dicta- 
tor. When he had made up his mind that Justice 



PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER TACK 33 

Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court should be im- 
peached, he simply penned a note to Joseph Nich- 
olson, who was then managing the impeachment 
of Judge Pickering, raising the question whether 
Chase's attack on the principles of the Consti- 
tution should go unpunished. "I ask these ques- 
tions for your consideration," said the President 
deferentially; "for myself, it is better that I should 
not interfere." And eventually impeachment 
proceedings were instituted. 

In this memorable first message, the President 
alluded to a little incident which had occurred in 
the Mediterranean, "the only exception to this 
state of general peace with which we have been 
blessed." Tripoli, one of the Barbary States, had 
begun depredations upon American commerce and 
the President had sent a small squadron for pro- 
tection. A ship of this squadron, the schooner 
Enterprise, had fallen in with a Tripolitan man-of- 
war and after a fight lasting three hours had forced 
the corsair to strike her colors. But since war had 
not been declared and the President's orders were 
to act only on the defensive, the crew of the Enter- 
prise dismantled the captured vessel and let her go. 
Would Congress, asked the President, take under 
consideration the advisability of placing our forces 



34 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

on an equality with those of our adversaries? Nei- 
ther the President nor his Secretary of the Treas- 
ury seems to have been aware that this single cloud 
on the horizon portended a storm of long duration. 
Yet within a year it became necessary to delay fur- 
ther reductions in the naval establishment and to 
impose new taxes to meet the very contingency 
which the peace-loving President declared most re- 
mote. Moreover, the very frigates which he had 
proposed to lay up in the eastern branch of the 
Potomac were manned and dispatched to the Medi- 
terranean to bring the Corsairs to terms. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CORSAIRS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN 

Shortly after Jefferson's inauguration a visitor 
presented himself at the Executive Mansion with 
disquieting news from the Mediterranean. Cap- 
tain WilHam Bainbridge of the frigate George 
Washington had just returned from a disagreeable 
mission. He had been commissioned to carry to 
the Dey of Algiers the annual tribute which the 
United States had contracted to pay. It appeared 
that while the frigate lay at anchor under the shore 
batteries off Algiers, the Dey attempted to requisi- 
tion her to carry his ambassador and some Turkish 
passengers to Constantinople. Bainbridge, who 
felt justly humiliated by his mission, wrathfully 
refused. An American frigate do errands for this 
insignificant pirate.'' He thought not! The Dey 
pointed to his batteries, however, and remarked, 
"You pay me tribute, by which you become my 
slaves; I have, therefore, a right to order you as I 



36 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

may think proper." The logic of the situation 
was undeniably on the side of the master of the 
shore batteries. Rather than have his ship blown 
to bits, Bainbridge swallowed his wrath and sub- 
mitted. On the eve of departure, he had to sub- 
mit to another indignity. The colors of Algiers 
must fly at the masthead. Again Bainbridge re- 
monstrated and again the Dey looked casually at 
his guns trained on the frigate. So ofiF the frig- 
ate sailed with the Dey's flag fluttering from her 
masthead, and her captain cursing lustily. 

The voyage of fifty-nine days to Constantinople, 
as Bainbridge recounted it to the President, was 
not without its amusing incidents, Bainbridge 
regaled the President with accounts of his Moham- 
medan passengers, who found nauch difiiculty in 
keeping their faces to the east while the frigate 
went about on a new tack. One of the faithful was 
delegated finally to watch the compass so that 
the rest might continue their prayers undisturbed. 
And at Constantinople Bainbridge had curious 
experiences with the Moslems. He announced 
his arrival as from the United States of America: 
he had hauled down the Dey's flag as soon as he 
was out of reach of the batteries. The port oflS- 
cials were greatly puzzled. What, pray, were the 



THE CORSAIRS 37 

United States? Bainbridge explained that they 
were part of the New World which Columbus had 
discovered. The Grand Seigneur then showed 
great interest in the stars of the American flag, 
remarking that, as his own was decorated with one 
of the heavenly bodies, the coincidence must be a 
good omen of the future friendly intercourse of the 
two nations. Bainbridge did his best to turn his 
unpalatable mission to good account, but he re- 
turned home in bitter humiliation. He begged that 
he might never again be sent to Algiers with tribute 
unless he was authorized to deliver it from the 
cannon's mouth. 

The President listened sympathetically to Bain- 
bridge's story, for he was not unfamiliar with the 
ways of the Barbary Corsairs and he had long been 
of the opinion that tribute only made these pirates 
bolder and more insufferable. The Congress of the 
Confederation, however, had followed the policy of 
the European powers and had paid tribute to se- 
cure immunity from attack, and the new Govern- 
ment had simply continued the policy of the old. 
In spite of his abhorrence of war, Jefferson held 
that coercion in this instance was on the whole 
cheaper and more efficacious. 

Not long after this interview with Bainbridge, 



38 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

President Jefferson was warned that the Pasha of 
Tripoli was worrying the American Consul with 
importunate demands for more tribute. This Afri- 
can potentate had discovered that his brother, the 
Dey of Algiers, had made a better bargain with the 
United States. He announced, therefore, that he 
must have a new treaty with more tribute or he 
would declare war. Fearing trouble from this 
quarter, the President dispatched a squadron of 
four vessels under Commodore Richard Dale to 
cruise in the Mediterranean, with orders to protect 
American commerce. It was the schooner En- 
terprise of this squadron which overpowered the 
Tripolitan cruiser, as Jefferson recounted in his 
message to Congress. 

The former Pasha of Tripoli had been blessed 
with thi-ee sons, Hasan, Hamet, and Yusuf. Be- 
tween these royal brothers, however, there seems 
to have been some incompatibility of temperament, 
for when their father died (Blessed be Allah !) Yu- 
suf, the youngest, had killed Hasan and had spared 
Hamet only because he could not lay hands upon 
him. Yusuf then proclaimed himself Pasha. It was 
Yusuf, the Pasha with this bloody record, who de- 
clared war on the United States, May 10, 1801, by 
cutting down the flagstaff of the American consulate. 



THE CORSAIRS 39 

To apply the term war to the naval operations 
which followed is, however, to lend specious im- 
portance to very trivial events. Commodore Dale 
made the most of his little squadron, it is true, con- 
voying merchantmen through the straits and along 
the Barbary coast, holding Tripolitan vessels laden 
with grain in hopeless inactivity off Gibraltar, and 
blockading the port of Tripoli, now with one frigate 
and now with another. When the terms of enlist- 
ment of Dale's crews expired, another squadron 
was gradually assembled in the Mediterranean, 
under the command of Captain Richard V. Morris, 
for Congress had now authorized the use of the 
navy for offensive operations, and the Secretary of 
the Treasury, with many misgivings, had begun 
to accumulate his Mediterranean Fund to meet 
contingent expenses. 

The blockade of Tripoli seems to have been care- 
lessly conducted by Morris and was finally aban- 
doned. There were undeniably great difficulties in 
the way of an effective blockade. The coast af- 
forded few good harbors; the heavy northerly 
winds made navigation both difficult and hazard- 
ous; the Tripolitan galleys and gunboats with their 
shallow draft could stand close in shore and elude 
the American frigates; and the ordnance on the 



40 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

American craft was not heavy enough to inflict 
any serious damage on the fortifications guarding 
the harbor. Probably these difficulties were not 
appreciated by the authorities at Washington; at 
all events, in the spring of 1803 Morris was sus- 
pended from his command and subsequently lost 
his commission. 

In the squadron of which Commodore Preble 
now took command was the Philadelphia, a frigate 
of thirty-six guns, to which Captain Bainbridge, 
eager to square accounts with the Corsairs, had 
been assigned. Late in October Bainbridge sighted 
a Tripolitan vessel standing in shore. He gave 
chase at once with perhaps more zeal than discre- 
tion, following his quarry well in shore in the hope 
of disabling her before she could make the harbor. 
Failing to intercept the corsair, he went about and 
was heading out to sea when the frigate ran on an 
uncharted reef and stuck fast. A worse predica- 
ment could scarcely be imagined. Every device 
known to Yankee seamen was employed to free the 
unlucky vessel. "The sails were promptly laid 
a-back," Bainbridge reported, "and the forward 
guns run aft, in hopes of backing her off, which not 
producing the desired effect, orders were given to 
stave the water in her hold, and pump it out, throw 



THE CORSAIRS 41 

overboard the lumber and heavy articles of every 
kind, cut away the anchors . . . and throw over 
all the guns, except a few for our defence. . . . 
As a last resource the foremast and main-top- 
gallant mast were cut away, but without any bene- 
ficial effect, and the ship remained a perfect wreck, 
exposed to the constant fire of the gunboats, which 
could not be returned." 

The officers advised Bainbridge that the situa- 
tion was becoming intolerable and justified desper- 
ate measures. They had been raked by a galling 
fire for more than four hours ; they had tried every 
means of floating the ship; humiliating as the al- 
ternative was, they saw no other course than to 
strike the colors. All agreed, therefore, that they 
should flood the magazine, scuttle the ship, and 
surrender to the Tripolitan small craft which hov- 
ered around the doomed frigate like so many 
vultures. 

For the second time off this accursed coast Bain- 
bridge hauled down his colors. The crews of the 
Tripolitan gunboats swarmed aboard and set about 
plundering right and left. Swords, epaulets, 
watches, money, and clothing were stripped from 
the officers; and if the crew in the forecastle suf- 
fered less it was because they had less to lose. 



42 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Officers and men were then tumbled into boats and 
taken ashore, half-naked and humiliated beyond 
words. Escorted by the exultant rabble, these 
three hundred luckless Americans were marched to 
the castle, where the Pasha sat in state. His High- 
ness was in excellent humor. Three hundred Amer- 
icans ! He counted them, each worth hundreds of 
dollars. Allah was good! 

A long, weary bondage awaited the captives. 
The common seamen were treated like galley- 
slaves, but the officers were given some considera- 
tion through the intercession of the Danish consul. 
Bainbridge was even allowed to correspond with 
Commodore Preble, and by means of invisible ink 
he transmitted many important messages which 
escaped the watchful eyes of his captors. De- 
pressed by his misfortune — for no one then or 
afterwards held him responsible for the disaster — 
Bainbridge had only one thought, and that was 
revenge. Day and night he brooded over plans of 
escape and retribution. 

As though to make the captive Americans drink 
the dregs of humiliation, the Philadelphia was 
floated off the reef in a heavy sea and towed safely 
into the harbor. The scuttling of the vessel had 
been hastily contrived, and the jubilant Tripolitans 



THE CORSAIRS 43 

succeeded in stopping her seams before she could 
fill. A frigate like the Philadelphia was a prize the 
like of which had never been seen in the Pasha's 
reign. He rubbed his hands in glee and taunted 
her crew. 

The sight of the frigate riding peacefully at an- 
chor in the harbor was torture to poor Bainbridge. 
In feverish letters he implored Preble to bombard 
the town, to sink the gunboats in the harbor, to 
recapture the frigate or to burn her at her moorings 
— anything to take away the bitterness of humilia- 
tion. The latter alternative, indeed, Preble had 
been revolving in his own mind. 

Toward midnight of February 16, 1804, Bain- 
bridge and his companions were aroused by the 
guns of the fort. They sprang to the window and 
witnessed the spectacle for which the unhappy cap- 
tain had prayed long and devoutly. The Phila- 
delphia was in flames — red, devouring flames, 
pouring out of her hold, climbing the rigging, lick- 
ing her topmasts, forming fantastic columns — 
devastating, unconquerable flames — the frigate 
was doomed, doomed! And every now and then 
one of her guns would explode as though booming 
out her requiem. Bainbridge was avenged. 

How had it all happened? 



44 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

The inception of this daring feat must be cred- 
ited to Commodore Preble; the execution fell to 
young Stephen Decatur, lieutenant in command 
of the sloop Enterprise. The plan was this : to use 
the Intrepid, a captured Tripolitan ketch, as the 
instrument of destruction, equipping her with 
combustibles and ammunition, and if possible to 
burn the Philadelphia and other ships in the harbor 
while raking the Pasha's castle with the frigate's 
eigh teen-pounders. When Decatur mustered his 
crew on the deck of the Enterprise and called for 
volunteers for this exploit, every man jack stepped 
forward. Not a man but was spoiling for excite- 
ment after months of tedious inactivity; not an 
American who did not covet a chance to avenge the 
loss of the Philadelphia. But all could not be used, 
and Decatur finally selected five officers and sixty- 
two men. On the night of the 3rd of February, the 
Intrepid set sail from Syracuse, accompanied by 
the brig Siren, which was to support the boarding 
party with her boats and cover their retreat. 

Two weeks later, the Intrepid, barely distin- 
guishable in the light of a new moon, drifted into 
the harbor of Tripoli. In the distance lay the un- 
fortunate Philadelphia. The little ketch was now 
within range of the batteries, but she drifted on 



THE CORSAIRS 45 

unmolested until within a hundred yards of the 
frigate. Then a hail came across the quiet bay. 
The pilot replied that he had lost his anchors and 
asked permission to make fast to the frigate for 
the night. The Tripohtan lookout grumbled as- 
sent. Ropes were then thrown out and the vessels 
were drawing together, when the cry "Amer- 
icanas!" went up from the deck of the frigate. In 
a trice Decatur and his men had scrambled aboard 
and overpowered the crew. 

It was a crucial moment. If Decatur's instruc- 
tions had not been imperative, he would have 
thrown prudence to the winds and have tried to cut 
out the frigate and make off in her. There were 
those, indeed, who believed that he might have 
succeeded. But the Commodore's orders were to 
destroy the frigate. There was no alternative. 
Combustibles were brought on board, the match 
applied, and in a few moments the frigate was 
ablaze. Decatur and his men had barely time to 
regain the Intrepid and to cut her fasts. The whole 
affair had not taken more than twenty minutes, 
and no one was killed or even seriously wounded. 

Pulling lustily at their sweeps, the crew of the 
Intrepid moved her slowly out of the harbor, in the 
light of the burning vessel. The guns of the fort 



46 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

were manned at last and were raining shot and 
shell wildly over the harbor. The jack-tars on the 
Intrepid seemed oblivious to danger, "commenting 
upon the beauty of the spray thrown up by the shot 
between us and the brilliant light of the ship, rather 
than calculating any danger," wrote Midshipman 
Morris. Then the starboard guns of the Phila- 
delphia, as though instinct with purpose, began to 
send hot shot into the town. The crew yelled with 
delight and gave three cheers for the redoubtable 
old frigate. It was her last action, God bless her! 
Her cables soon burned, however, and she drifted 
ashore, there to blow up in one last supreme effort 
to avenge herself. At the entrance of the harbor 
the Intrepid found the boats of the Siren, and three 
days later both rejoined the squadron. 

Thrilling as Decatur's feat was, it brought peace 
no nearer. The Pasha, infuriated by the loss of 
the Philadelphia, was more exorbitant than ever 
in his demands. There was nothing for it but 
to scour the Mediterranean for Tripolitan ships, 
maintain the blockade so far as weather permitted, 
and await the opportunity to reduce the city of 
Tripoli by bombardment. But Tripoli was a hard 
nut to crack. On the ocean side it was protected 



THE CORSAIRS 47 

by forts and batteries and the harbor was guarded 
by a long hne of reefs. Through the openings in 
this natural breakwater, the light-draft native craft 
could pass in and out to harass the blockading fleet. 

It was Commodore Preble's plan to make a care- 
fully concerted attack upon this stronghold as soon 
as summer weather conditions permitted. For 
this purpose he had strengthened his squadron at 
Syracuse by purchasing a number of flat-bottomed 
gunboats with which he hoped to engage the enemy 
in the shallow waters about Tripoli while his larger 
vessels shelled the town and batteries. He arrived 
off the African coast about the middle of July but 
encountered adverse weather, so that for several 
weeks he could accomplish nothing of consequence. 
Finally, on the 3rd of August, a memorable date in 
the annals of the American navy, he gave the signal 
for action. 

The new gunboats were deployed in two divi- 
sions, one commanded by Decatur, and fully met 
expectations by capturing two enemy ships in most 
sanguinary, hand-to-hand fighting. Meantime the 
main squadron drew close in shore, so close, it is 
said, that the gunners of shore batteries could 
not depress their pieces suflSciently to score hits. 
All these preliminaries were watched with bated 



48 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

breath by the officers of the old Philadelphia from 
behind their prison bars. 

The Pasha had viewed the approach of the 
American fleet with utter disdain. He promised 
the spectators who lined the terraces that they 
would witness some rare sport; they should see 
his gunboats put the enemy to flight. But as the 
American gunners began to get the range and pour 
shot into the town, and the Constitution with her 
heavy ordnance passed and repassed, delivering 
broadsides within three cables' length of the batter- 
ies, the Pasha's nerves were shattered and he fled 
precipitately to his bomb-proof shelter. No doubt 
the damage inflicted by this bombardment was 
very considerable, but Tripoli still defied the en- 
emy. Four times within the next four weeks 
Preble repeated these assaults, pausing after each 
bombardment to ascertain what terms the Pasha 
had to offer; but the wily Yusuf was obdurate, 
knowing well enough that, if he waited, the gods of 
wind and storm would come to his aid and disperse 
the enemy's fleet. 

It was after the fifth ineffectual assault that 
Preble determined on a desperate stroke. He re- 
solved to fit out a fireship and to send her into the 
very jaws of death, hoping to destroy the Tripolitan 



THE CORSAIRS 49 

gunboats and at the same time to damage the 
castle and the town. He chose for this perilous 
enterprise the old Intrepid which had served her 
captors so well, and out of many volunteers he 
gave the command to Captain Richard Somers and 
Lieutenant Henry Wads worth. The little ketch 
was loaded with a hundred barrels of gunpowder 
and a large quantity of combustibles and made 
ready for a quick run by the batteries into the 
harbor. Certain death it seemed to sail this en- 
gine of destruction past the outlying reefs into the 
midst of the Tripolitan gunboats; but every pre- 
caution was taken to provide for the escape of the 
crew. Two rowboats were taken along and in 
these frail craft they believed they could embark, 
when once the torch had been applied, and in the 
ensuing confusion return to the squadron. 

Somers selected his crew of ten men with care, 
and at the last moment consented to let Lieutenant 
Joseph Israel join the perilous expedition. On the 
night of the 4th of September, the Intrepid sailed 
off in the darkness toward the mouth of the har- 
bor. Anxious eyes followed the little vessel, try- 
ing to pierce the blackness that soon enveloped 
her. As she neared the harbor the shore batteries 
opened fire; and suddenly a blinding flash and a 



50 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

+errific explosion told the fate which overtook her. 
Fragments of wreckage rose high in the air, the 
fearful concussion was felt by every boat in the 
squadron, and then darkness and awful silence en- 
folded the dead and the dying. Two days later the 
bodies of the heroic thirteen, mangled beyond rec- 
ognition, were cast up by the sea. Even Captain 
Bainbridge, gazing sorrowfully upon his dead com- 
rades could not recognize their features. Just 
what caused the explosion will never be known. 
Preble always believed that Tripolitans had at- 
tempted to board the Intrepid and that Somers 
had deliberately fired the powder magazine rather 
than surrender. Be that as it may, no one doubts 
that the crew were prepared to follow their com- 
mander to self-destruction if necessary. In deep 
gloom, the squadron returned to Syracuse, leaving 
a few vessels to maintain a fitful blockade off the 
hated and menacing coast. 

Far away from the sound of Commodore Preble's 
guns a strange, almost farcical, intervention in the 
Tripolitan War was preparing. The scene shifts 
to the desert on the east, where William Eaton, 
consul at Tunis, becomes the center of interest. 
Since the very beginning of the war, this energetic 



THE CORSAIRS 51 

and enterprising Connecticut Yankee had taken a 
lively interest in the fortunes of Hamet Karamanli, 
the legitimate heir to the throne, who had been 
driven into exile by Yusuf the pretender. Eaton 
loved intrigue as Preble gloried in war. Why not 
assist Hamet to recover his throne.'* Why not, 
in frontier parlance, start a back-fire that would 
make Tripoli too hot for Yusuf? He laid his plans 
before his superiors at Washington, who, while not 
altogether convinced of his competence to play 
the king-maker, were persuaded to make him 
navy agent, subject to the orders of the commander 
of the American squadron in the Mediterranean. 
Commodore Samuel Barron, who succeeded Preble, 
was instructed to avail himself of the cooperation 
of the ex-Pasha of Tripoli if he deemed it pru- 
dent. In the fall of 1804 Barron dispatched Eaton 
in the Argus, Captain Isaac Hull commander, to 
Alexandria to find Hamet and to assure him of 
the cooperation of the American squadron in the 
reconquest of his kingdom. Eaton entered thus 
upon the coveted role: twenty centuries looked 
down upon him as they had upon Napoleon. 

A mere outline of what followed reads like the 
scenario of an opera bouffe. Eaton ransacked Alex- 
andria in search of Hamet the unfortunate but 



52 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

failed to find the truant. Then acting on a rumor 
that Hamet had departed up the Nile to join 
the Mamelukes, who were enjoying one of their 
seasonal rebellions against constituted authority, 
Eaton plunged into the desert and finally brought 
back the astonished and somewhat reluctant heir 
to the throne. With prodigious energy Eaton then 
organized an expedition which was to march over- 
land toward Derne, meet the squadron at the Bay 
of Bomba, and descend vi et armis upon the unsus- 
pecting pretender at Tripoli. He even made a 
covenant with Hamet promising with altogether 
unwarranted explicitness that the United States 
would use "their utmost exertions" to reestablish 
him in his sovereignty. Eaton was to be "general 
and commander-in-chief of the land forces." This 
aggressive Yankee alarmed Hamet, who clearly did 
not want his sovereignty badly enough to fight for it. 
The international army which the American 
generalissimo mustered was a motley array — 
twenty-five cannoneers of uncertain nationality, 
thirty-eight Greeks, Hamet and his ninety fol- 
lowers, and a party of Arabian horsemen and 
camel-drivers — all told about four hundred men. 
The story of their march across the desert is a 
modern Anabasis. When the Arabs were not 



THE CORSAIRS 53 

quarreling among themselves and plundering the 
rest of the caravan, they were demanding more 
pay. Rebuffed they would disappear with their 
camels into the fastnesses of the desert, only to 
reappear unexpectedly with new importunities. 
Between Hamet, who was in constant terror of his 
life and quite ready to abandon the expedition, and 
these mutinous Arabs, Eaton was in a position to 
appreciate the vicissitudes of Xenophon and his 
Ten Thousand. No ordinary person, indeed, could 
have surmounted all obstacles and brought his 
balky forces within sight of Derne. 

Supported by the American fleet which had 
rendezvoused as agreed in the Bay of Bomba, the 
four hundred advanced upon the city. Again the 
Arab contingent would have made off into the 
desert but for the promise of more money. Hamet 
was torn by conflicting emotions, in which a de- 
sire to retreat was uppermost. Eaton was, as 
ever, indefatigable and indomitable. When his 
forces were faltering at the crucial moment, he 
boldly ordered an assault and carried the de- 
fenses of the city. The guns of the ships in the 
harbor completed the discomfiture of the enemy, 
and the international army took possession of 
the citadel. 



54 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Derne won, however, had to be resolutely de- 
fended. Twice within the next four weeks, Tri- 
politan forces were beaten back only with the 
greatest difficulty. The day after the second as- 
sault (June 10th) the frigate Constellation arrived 
off Derne with orders which rang down the curtain 
on this interlude in the Tripolitan War. Derne was 
to be evacuated ! Peace had been concluded ! 

Just what considerations moved the Adminis- 
tration to conclude peace at a moment when the 
largest and most powerful American fleet ever 
placed under a single command was assembling in 
the Mediterranean and when the land expedition 
was approaching its objective, has never been ade- 
quately explained. Had the President's belligerent 
spirit oozed away as the punitive expeditions 
against Tripoli lost their merely defensive char- 
acter and took on the proportions of offensive na- 
val operations.'* Had the Administration become 
alarmed at the di-ain upon the treasury ? Or did the 
President wish to have his hands free to deal with 
those depredations upon American commerce com- 
mitted by British and French cruisers which were 
becoming far more frequent and serious than ever 
the attacks of the Corsairs of the Mediterranean 



THE CORSAIRS 55 

had been? Certain it is that overtures of peace 
from the Pasha were welcomed by the very naval 
commanders who had been most eager to wrest 
a victory from the Corsairs. Perhaps they, too, 
were wearied by prolonged war with an elusive 
foe off a treacherous coast. 

How little prepared the Administration was to 
sustain a prolonged expedition by land against 
Tripoli to put Hamet on his throne, appears in the 
instructions which Commodore Barron carried to 
the Mediterranean. If he could use Eaton and 
Hamet to make a diversion, well and good; but 
he was at the same time to assist Colonel Tobias 
Lear, American Consul-General at Algiers, in ne- 
gotiating terms of peace, if the Pasha showed a 
conciliatory spirit. The Secretary of State calcu- 
lated that the moment had arrived when peace 
could probably be secured " without any price and 
pecuniary compensation whatever." 

Such expectations proved quite unwarranted. 
The Pasha was ready for peace, but he still had his 
price. Poor Bainbridge, writing from captivity, 
assm-ed Barron that the Pasha would never let his 
prisoners go without a ransom. Nevertheless, Com- 
modore Barron determined to meet the overtures 
which the Pasha had made through the Danish 



5Q JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

consul at Tripoli. On the 24th of May he put the 
frigate Essex at the disposal of Lear, who crossed 
to Tripoli and opened direct negotiations. 

The treaty which Lear concluded on June 4, 
1805, was an inglorious document. It purchased 
peace, it is true, and the release of some three hun- 
dred sad and woe-begone American sailors. But 
because the Pasha held three hundred prisoners, 
and the United States only a paltry hundred, the 
Pasha was to receive sixty thousand dollars. Derne 
was to be evacuated and no further aid was to be 
given to rebellious subjects. The United States 
was to endeavor to persuade Hamet to withdraw 
from the soil of Tripoli — no very difficult matter 
— while the Pasha on his part was to restore 
Hamet's family to him — at some future time. 
Nothing was said about tribute; but it was under- 
stood that according to ancient custom each new- 
ly appointed consul should carry to the Pasha a 
present not exceeding six thousand dollars. 

The Tripolitan War did not end in a blaze of 
glory for the United States. It had been waged in 
the spirit of "not a cent for tribute"; it was con- 
cluded with a thinly veiled payment for peace; and, 
worst of all, it did not prevent further trouble with 
the Barbary States. The war had been prosecuted 



THE CORSAIRS 57 

with vigor under Preble; it had languished under 
Barron; and it ended just when the naval forces 
were adequate to the task. Yet, from another 
point of view, Preble, Decatur, Somers, and their 
comrades had not fought in vain. They had 
created imperishable traditions for the American 
navy; they had established a morale in the service; 
and they had trained a group of young officers who 
were to give a good account of themselves when 
their foes should be not shifty Tripolitans but 
sturdy Britons. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 

Bainbridge in forlorn captivity at Tripoli, Preble 
and Barron keeping anxious watch off the stormy 
coast of Africa, Eaton marching through the wind- 
swept desert, are picturesque figures that arrest 
the attention of the historian; but they seemed like 
shadowy actors in a remote drama to the American 
at home, absorbed in the humdrum activities of 
trade and commerce. Through all these dreary 
years of intermittent war, other matters engrossed 
the President and Congress and caught the atten- 
tion of the public. Not the rapacious Pasha of 
Tripoli but the First Consul of France held the cen- 
ter of the stage. At the same time that news ar- 
rived of the encounter of the Enterprise with the 
Corsairs came also the confirmation of rumors cur- 
rent all winter in Europe. Bonaparte had se- 
cured from Spain the retrocession of the province 
of Louisiana. From every point of view, as the 

58 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 59 

President remarked, the transfer of this vast prov- 
ince to a new master was "an inauspicious circum- 
stance." The shadow of the Corsican, already a 
menace to the peace of Em-ope, fell across the seas. 
A strange chain of circumstances linked Bona^ 
parte with the New World. When he became mas- 
ter of France by the cowp d'etat of the 18th Brum- 
aire (November 9, 1799), he fell heir to many 
policies which the republic had inherited from the 
old regime. Frenchmen had never ceased to la- 
ment the loss of colonial possessions in North 
America. From time to time the hope of reviving 
the colonial empire sprang up in the hearts of the 
rulers of France. It was this hope that had in- 
spired Genet's mission to the United States and 
more than one intrigue among the pioneers of the 
Mississippi Valley, during Washington's second 
Administration. The connecting link between the 
old regime and the new was the statesman Talley- 
rand. He had gone into exile in America when the 
French Revolution entered upon its last frantic 
phase and had brought back to France the plan and 
purpose which gave consistency to his diplomacy 
in the oflSce of Minister of Foreign Affairs, first 
under the Directory, then under the First Consul. 
Had Talleyrand alone nursed this plan, it would 



60 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

have had little significance in history; but it was 
eagerly taken up by a group of Frenchmen who be- 
lieved that France, having set her house in order 
and secured peace in Europe, should now strive for 
orderly commercial development. The road to 
prosperity, they believed, lay through the acqui- 
sition of colonial possessions. The recovery of 
the province of Louisiana was an integral part of 
their programme. 

While the Directory was still in power and 
Bonaparte was pursuing his ill-fated expedition in 
Egypt, Talleyrand had tried to persuade the Span- 
ish Court to cede Louisiana and the Floridas. The 
only way for Spain to put a limit to the ambitions 
of the Americans, he had argued speciously, was 
to shut them up within their natural limits. Only 
so could Spain preserve the rest of her immense 
domain. But since Spain was confessedly unequal 
to the task, why not let France shoulder the re- 
sponsibility? "The French Republic, mistress of 
these two provinces, will be a wall of brass forever 
impenetrable to the combined efforts of England 
and America," he assured the Spaniards. But the 
time was not ripe. 

Such, then, was the policy which Bonaparte in- 
herited when he became First Consul and master 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 61 

of the destinies of his adopted country. A dazzHng 
future opened before him. Within a year he had 
pacified Europe, crushing the armies of Austria by 
a succession of brilHant victories, and laying pros- 
trate the petty states of the Itahan peninsula. 
Peace with England was also in sight. Six weeks 
after his victory at Marengo, Bonaparte sent a 
special courier to Spain to demand — the word is 
hardly too strong — the retrocession of Louisiana. 
It was an odd whim of Fate that left the destiny 
of half the American continent to Don Carlos IV, 
whom Henr;> Adams calls "a kind of Spanish 
George III " — virtuous, to be sure, but heavy, 
obtuse, inconsequential, and incompetent. With 
incredible fatuousness the King gave his consent 
to a bargain by which he was to yield Louisiana 
in return for Tuscany or other Italian provinces 
which Bonaparte had just overrun with his ar- 
mies. " Congratulate me," cried Don Carlos to his 
Prime Minister, his eyes sparkling, "on this bril- 
liant beginning of Bonaparte's relations with Spain. 
The Prince-presumptive of Parma, my son-in-law 
and nephew, a Bourbon, is invited by France to 
reign, on the delightful banks of the Arno, over a 
people who once spread their commerce through 
the known world, and who were the controlling 



G2 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

power of Italy, — a people mild, civilized, full of 
humanity; the classical land of science and art." 
A few war-ridden Italian provinces for an imperial 
domain that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to 
Lake Superior and that extended westward no one 
knew how far! 

The bargain was closed by a preliminary treaty 
signed at San Ildefonso on October 1, 1800. Just 
one year later to a day, the preliminaries of the 
Peace of Amiens were signed, removing the menace 
of England on the seas. The First Consul was now 
free to pursue his colonial policy, and the des- 
tiny of the Mississippi Valley hung in the balance. 
Between the First Consul and his goal, however, 
loomed up the gigantic figure of ToussaintL'Ouver- 
ture, a full-blooded negro, who had made himself 
master of Santo Domingo and had thus planted 
himself squarely in the sea-road to Louisiana. The 
story of this "gilded African," as Bonaparte con- 
temptuously dubbed him, cannot be told in these 
pages, because it involves no less a theme than the 
history of the French Revolution in this island, 
once the most thriving among the colonial posses- 
sions of France in the West Indies. The great 
plantations of French Santo Domingo (the western 
part of the island) had supplied half of Europe with 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 63 

sugar, coflFee, and cotton; three-fourths of the im- 
ports from French-American colonies were shipped 
from Santo Domingo. As the result of class 
struggles between whites and mulattoes for politi- 
cal power, the most terrific slave insurrection in 
the Western Hemisphere had deluged the island 
in blood. Political convulsions followed which 
wrecked the prosperity of the island. Out of this 
chaos emerged the one man who seemed able to 
restore a semblance of order — the Napoleon of 
Santo Domingo, whose character, thinks Henry 
Adams, had a curious resemblance to that of the 
Corsican. The negro was, however, a ferocious 
brute without the redeeming qualities of the Corsi- 
can, though, as a leader of his race, his intelligence 
cannot be denied. Though professing allegiance 
to the French Republic, Toussaint was driven by 
circumstances toward independence. While his 
Corsican counterpart was executing his coup d'etat 
and pacifying Europe, he threw off the mask, im- 
prisoned the agent of the French Directory, seized 
the Spanish part of the island, and proclaimed a 
new constitution for Santo Domingo, assuming all 
power for himself for life and the right of naming 
his successor. The negro defied the Corsican. 
The First Consul was now prepared to accept the 



64 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

challenge. Santo Domingo must be recovered and 
restored to its former prosperity — even if slavery 
had to be reestablished — before Louisiana could 
be made the center of colonial empire in the West. 
He summoned Leclerc, a general of excellent repu- 
tation and husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, 
and gave to him the command of an immense ex- 
pedition which was already preparing at Brest. 
In the latter part of November, Leclerc set sail 
with a large fleet bearing an army of ten thousand 
men and on January 29, 1802, arrived off the east- 
ern cape of Santo Domingo. A legend says that 
Toussaint looking down on the huge armada ex- 
claimed, "We must perish. All France is com- 
ing to Santo Domingo. It has been deceived; it 
comes to take vengeance and enslave the blacks." 
The negro leader made a formidable resistance, 
nevertheless, annihilating one French army and 
seriously endangering the expedition. But he was 
betrayed by his generals, lured within the French 
lines, made prisoner, and finally sent to France. 
He was incarcerated in a French fortress in the Jura 
Mountains and there perished miserably in 1803. 
The significance of these events in the French 
West Indies was not lost upon President Jefferson. 
The conquest of Santo Domingo was the prelude to 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 65 

the occupation of Louisiana. It would be only a 
change of European proprietors, of absentee land- 
lords, to be sure; but there was a world of difference 
between France, bent upon acquiring a colonial em- 
pire and quiescent Spain, resting on her past 
achievements. The difference was personified by 
Bonaparte and Don Carlos. The sovereignty of 
the lower Mississippi country could never be a 
matter of indifference to those settlers of Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, and Ohio who in the year 1799 
sent down the Mississippi in barges, keel-boats, 
and flatboats one hundred and twenty thousand 
pounds of tobacco, ten thousand barrels of flour, 
twenty-two thousand pounds of hemp, five hun- 
dred barrels of cider, and as many more of 
whiskey, for transshipment and export. The 
right of navigation of the Mississippi was a diplo- 
matic problem bequeathed by the Confederation. 
The treaty with Spain in 1795 had not solved 
the question, though it had established a modus 
vivendi. Spain had conceded to Americans the so- 
called right of deposit for three years — that is, the 
right to deposit goods at New Orleans free of duty 
and to transship them to ocean-going vessels; and 
the concession, though never definitely renewed, 
was tacitly continued. No; the people of the 



66 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

trans-Alleghany country could not remain silent 
and unprotesting witnesses to the retrocession 
of Louisiana. 

Nor was Jefferson's interest in the Mississippi 
problem of recent origin. Ten years earlier as 
Secretary of State, while England and Spain 
seemed about to come to blows over the Nootka 
Sound affair, he had approached both France and 
Spain to see whether the United States might not 
acquire the island of New Orleans or at least a 
port near the mouth of the river "with a circum- 
adjacent territory, sufficient for its support, well- 
defined, and extraterritorial to Spain." In case 
of war, England would in all probability conquer 
Spanish Louisiana. How much better for Spain to 
cede territory on the eastern side of the Mississippi 
to a safe neighbor like the United States and thereby 
make sure of her possessions on the western waters 
of that river. It was " not our interest," wrote Mr. 
Jefferson, "to cross the Mississippi for ages!" 

It was, then, a revival of an earlier idea when 
President Jefferson, officially through Robert R. 
Livingston, Minister to France, and unofficially 
through a French gentleman, Dupont de Nemours, 
sought to impress upon the First Consul the unwis- 
dom of his taking possession of Louisiana, without 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 67 

ceding to the United States at least New Orleans 
and the Floridas as a "palliation." Even so, France 
would become an object of suspicion, a neighbor 
with whom Americans were bound to quarrel. 

Undeterred by this naive threat, doubtless con- 
sidering its source, the First Consul pressed Don 
Carlos for the delivery of Louisiana. The King 
procrastinated but at length gave his promise on 
condition that France should pledge herself not to 
alienate the province. Of course, replied the oblig- 
ing Talleyrand. The King's wishes were identi- 
cal with the intentions of the French govern- 
ment. France would never alienate Louisiana. 
The First Consul pledged his word. On October 15, 
1802, Don Carlos signed the order that delivered 
Louisiana to France. 

While the President was anxiously awaiting the 
results of his diplomacy, news came from Santo 
Domingo that Leclerc and his army had triumphed 
over Toussaint and his faithless generals, only to 
succumb to a far more insidious foe. Yellow fever 
had appeared in the summer of 1802 and had swept 
away the second army dispatched by Bonaparte 
to take the place of the first which had been con- 
sumed in the conquest of the island. Twenty -four 
thousand men had been sacrificed at the very 



68 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

threshold of colonial empire, and the skies of 
Europe were not so clear as they had been. And 
then came the news of Leclerc's death (November 
2, 1802). Exhausted by incessant worry, he too 
had succumbed to the pestilence; and with him, 
as events proved, passed Bonaparte's dream of 
colonial empire in the New World. 

Almost at the same time with these tidings a 
report reached the settlers of Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee that the Spanish intendant at New Orleans 
had suspended the right of deposit. The Missis- 
sippi was therefore closed to western commerce. 
Here was the hand of the Corsican.' Now they 
knew what they had to expect from France. Why 
not seize the opportunity and strike before the 
French legions occupied the country.^ The Span- 
ish garrisons were weak; a few hundred resolute 
frontiersmen would speedily overpower them. 

Convinced that he must resort to stiffer measures 
if he would not be hurried into hostilities. President 
Jefferson appointed James Monroe as Minister 
Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to 
France and Spain. He was to act with Robert 

' It is now clear enough that Bonaparte was not directly re- 
sponsible for this act of the Spanish intendant. See Channing, 
History of the United States, vol. iv, p. 312, and Note, 326-327. 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 69 

Livingston at Paris and with Charles Pinckney, 
Minister to Spain, "in enlarging and more effec- 
tually securing our rights and interests in the river 
Mississippi and in the territories eastward there- 
of" — -whatever these vague terms might mean. 
The President evidently read much into them, for 
he assured Monroe that on the event of his mission 
depended the future destinies of the Republic. 

Two months passed before Monroe sailed with 
his instructions. He had ample time to study them, 
for he was thirty days in reaching the coast of 
France. The first aim of the envoys was to procure 
New Orleans and the Floridas, bidding as high as 
ten million dollars if necessary. Failing in this 
object, the}^ were then to secure the right of deposit 
and such other desirable concessions as they could. 
To secure New Orleans, they might even offer to 
guarantee the integrity of Spanish possessions on 
the west bank of the Mississippi. Throughout the 
instructions ran the assumption that the Floridas 
had either passed with Louisiana into the hands of 
France or had since been acquired. 

While the packet bearing Monroe was buffet- 
ing stormy seas, the policy of Bonaparte under- 
went a transformation — an abrupt transformation 
it seemed to Livingston. On the 12th of March 



70 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the American Minister witnessed an extraordi- 
nary scene in Madame Bonaparte's drawing-room. 
Bonaparte and Lord Whitworth, the British Ambas- 
sador, were in conversation, when the First Consul 
remarked, "I find, my Lord, your nation want war 
again." "No, Sir," repHed the Ambassador, *'we 
are very desirous of peace." "I must either have 
Malta or war," snapped Bonaparte. The amazed 
onlookers soon spread the rumor that Europe was 
again to be plunged into war; but, viewed in the 
light of subsequent events, this incident had even 
greater significance; it marked the end of Bona- 
parte's colonial scheme. Though the motives for 
this change of front will always be a matter of 
conjecture, they are somewhat clarified by the 
failure of the Santo Domingo expedition. Leclerc 
was dead; the negroes were again in control; the 
industries of the island were ruined; Rochambeau, 
Leclerc's successor, was clamoring for thirty-five 
thousand more men to reconquer the island; the 
expense was alarming — and how meager the re- 
turns for this colonial venture! Without Santo 
Domingo, Louisiana would be of little use; and 
to restore prosperity to the West India island — 
even granting that its immediate conquest were 
possible — would demand many years and large 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 71 

disbursements. The path to glory did not lie in 
this direction. In Europe, as Henry Adams ob- 
serves, "war could be made to support war; in 
Santo Domingo peace alone could but slowly re- 
pair some part of this frightful waste." 

There may well have been other reasons for 
Bonaparte's change of front. If he read between 
the lines of a memoir which Pontalba, a wealthy 
and well-informed resident of Louisiana, sent to 
him, he must have realized that this province, too, 
while it might become an inexhaustible source of 
wealth for France, might not be easy to hold. 
There was here, it is true, no Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture to lead the blacks in insurrection; but there 
was a white menace from the north which was far 
more serious. These Kentuckians, said Pontalba 
trenchantly, must be watched, cajoled, and brought 
constantly under French influence through agents. 
There were men among them who thought of 
Louisiana "as the highroad to the conquest of 
Mexico." Twenty or thirty thousand of these 
westerners on flatboats could come down the river 
and sweep everything before them. To be sure, 
they were an undisciplined horde with slender mili- 
tary equipment — a striking contrast to the 
French legions; but, added the Frenchman, "a 



72 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

great deal of skill in shooting, the habit of being in 
the woods and of enduring fatigue — this is what 
makes up for every deficiency." 

And if Bonaparte had ever read a remarkable 
report of the Spanish Governor Carondelet, he 
must have divined that there was something ele- 
mental and irresistible in this down-the-river- 
pressure of the people of the West. "A carbine 
and a little maize in a sack are enough for an Amer- 
ican to wander about in the forests alone for a 
whole month. With his carbine, he kills the wild 
cattle and deer for food and defends himself from 
the savages. The maize dampened serves him in 
lieu of bread. . . . The cold does not affright 
him. When a family tires of one location, it moves 
to another, and there it settles with the same ease. 
Thus in about eight years the settlement of Cum- 
berland has been formed, which is now about to be 
created into a state." 

On Easter Sunday, 1803, Bonaparte revealed his 
purpose, which had doubtless been slowly maturing, 
to two of his ministers, one of whom, Barbe Mar- 
bois, was attached to the United States through 
residence, his devotion to republican principles, 
and marriage to an American wife. The First 
Consul proposed to cede Louisiana to the United 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 73 

States: he considered the colony as entirely lost. 
What did they think of the proposal? Marbois, 
with an eye to the needs of the Treasury of which 
he was the head, favored the sale of the province; 
and next day he was directed to interview Living- 
ston at once. Before he could do so, Talleyrand, 
perhaps surmising in his crafty way the drift of 
the First Consul's thoughts, startled Livingston by 
asking what the United States would give for the 
whole of Louisiana. Livingston, who was in truth 
hard of hearing, could not believe his ears. For 
months he had talked, written, and argued in vain 
for a bit of territory near the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, and here was an imperial domain tossed into 
his lap, as it were. Livingston recovered from his 
surprise sufficiently to name a trifling sum which 
Talleyrand declared too low. Would Mr. Living- 
ston think it over.^* He, Talleyrand, really did not 
speak from authority. The idea had struck him, 
that was all. 

Some days later in a chance conversation with 
Marbois, Livingston spoke of his extraordinary 
interview with Talleyrand. Marbois intimated 
that he was not ignorant of the affair and invited 
Livingston to a further conversation. Although 
Monroe had already arrived in Paris and was now 



74 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

apprised of this sudden turn of affairs, Livingston 
went alone to the Treasury Office and there in 
conversation, which was prolonged until midnight, 
he fenced with Marbois over a fair price for Loui- 
siana. The First Consul, said Marbois, demanded 
one hundred million francs. Livingston demurred 
at this huge sum. The United States did not want 
Louisiana but was willing to give ten million dol- 
lars for New Orleans and the Floridas. What 
would the United States give then .'* asked Marbois. 
Livingston replied that he would have to confer 
with Monroe. Finally Marbois suggested that if 
they would name sixty million francs (less than 
$12,000,000) and assume claims which Americans 
had against the French Treasury for twenty mil- 
lion more, he would take the offer under advise- 
ment. Livingston would not commit himself, 
again insisting that he must consult Monroe. 

So important did this interview seem to Living- 
ston that he returned to his apartment and wrote a 
long report to Madison without waiting to confer 
with Monroe. It was three o'clock in the morning 
when he was done. "We shall do all we can to 
cheapen the purchase," he wrote, "but my present 
sentiment is that we shall buy." 

History does not record what Monroe said when 



THE SHADOW OF THE FIRST CONSUL 75 

his colleague revealed these midnight secrets. But 
in the prolonged negotiations which followed Mon- 
roe, though ill, took his part, and in the end, on 
April 30, 1803, set his hand to the treaty which 
ceded Louisiana to the United States on the terms 
set by Marbois. In two conventions bearing the 
same date, the commissioners bound the United 
States to pay directly to France the sum of sixty 
million francs ($11,250,000) and to assume debts 
owed by France to American citizens, estimated at 
not more than twenty million francs ($3,750,000). 
Tradition says that after Marbois, Monroe, and 
Livingston had signed their names, Livingston 
remarked: "We have lived long, but this is the 
noblest work of our lives. . . . From this day the 
United States take their place among the powers of 
the first rank." 



CHAPTER V 

IN PURSUIT OF THE FLOItlDAS 

The purchase of Louisiana was a diplomatic tri- 
umph of the first magnitude. No American nego- 
tiators have ever acquired so much for so little; yet, 
oddly enough, neither Livingston nor Monroe had 
the slightest notion of the vast extent of the domain 
which they had purchased . They had bought Lou- 
isiana "with the same extent that it is now in the 
hands of Spain, and that it had when France pos- 
sessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties 
subsequently entered into between Spain and other 
States," but what its actual boundaries were they 
did not know. Considerably disturbed that the 
treaty contained no definition of boundaries, Liv- 
ingston sought information from the enigmatical 
Talleyrand. "What are the eastern bounds of Lou- 
isiana?" he asked. "I do not know," replied Tal- 
leyrand; "youmusttake it as we received it." "But 
what did you mean to take?" urged Livingston 

76 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 77 

somewhat naively. "I do not know," was the 
answer. *'Then you mean that we shall construe 
it in our own way .'' " *' I can give you no direction," 
said the astute Frenchman. "You have made a 
noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you 
will make the most of it." And with these vague 
assurances Livingston had to be satisfied. 

The first impressions of Jefferson were not much 
more definite, for, while he believed that the ac- 
quired territory more than doubled the area of the 
United States, he could only describe it as includ- 
ing all the waters of the Missouri and the Mississip- 
pi. He started at once, however, to collect infor- 
mation about Louisiana . He prepared a list of que- 
ries which he sent to reputable persons living in or 
near New Orleans. The task was one in which 
he delighted: to accumulate and diffuse informa- 
tion — a truly democratic mission — gave him 
more real pleasm'e than to reign in the Executive 
Mansion. His interest in the trans-Mississippi 
country, indeed, was not of recent birth; he had 
nursed for years an insatiable curiosity about 
the source and course of the Missouri; and in 
this very year he had commissioned his secre- 
tary, Meriwether Lewis, to explore the great river 
and its tributaries, to ascertain if they afforded a 



78 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

direct and practicable water communication across 
the continent. 

The outcome of the President's questionnaire 
was a report submitted to Congress in the fall of 
1803, which contained much interesting informa- 
tion and some entertaining misinformation. The 
statistical matter we may put to one side, as con- 
temporary readers doubtless did; certain impres- 
sions are worth recording. New Orleans, the first 
and immediate object of negotiations, contained, 
it would appear, only a small part of the population 
of the province, which numbered some twenty or 
more rural districts. On the river above the city 
were the plantations of the so-called Upper Coast, 
inhabited mostly by slaves whose Creole masters 
lived in town; then, as one journeyed up-stream 
appeared the first and second German Coasts, 
where dwelt the descendants of those Germans who 
had been brought to the province by John Law's 
Mississippi Bubble, an industrious folk making 
their livelihood as purveyors to the city. Every 
Friday night they loaded their small craft with 
produce and held market next day on the river 
front at New Orleans, adding another touch to the 
picturesque groups which frequented the levees. 
Above the German Coasts were the first and second 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 79 

Acadian Coasts, populated by the numerous prog- 
eny of those unhappy refugees who were expelled 
from Nova Scotia in 1755. Acadian settlements 
were scattered also along the backwaters west of 
the great river: Bayou Lafourche was lined with 
farms which were already producing cotton; near 
Bayou Teche and Bayou Vermilion — the Attaka- 
pas country — were cattle ranges ; and to the north 
was the richer grazing country known as Opelousas. 
Passing beyond the Iberville River, which was 
indeed no river at all but only an overflow of the 
Mississippi, the traveler up-stream saw on his right 
hand "the government of Baton Rouge" with its 
scattered settlements and mixed population of 
French, Spanish, and Anglo-Americans; and still 
farther on, the Spanish parish of West Feliciana, 
accounted a part of West Florida and described by 
President Jefferson as the garden of the cotton- 
growing region. Beyond this point the President's 
description of Louisiana became less confident, as 
reliable sources of information failed him. His cre- 
dulity, however, led him to make one amazing 
statement, which provoked the ridicule of his po- 
litical opponents, always ready to pounce upon the 
slips of this philosopher-president. "One extraor- 
dinary fact relative to salt must not be omitted," 



80 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

he wrote in all seriousness. "There exists, about 
one thousand miles up the Missouri, and not far 
from that river, a salt mountain ! The existence of 
such a mountain might well be questioned, were it 
not for the testimony of several respectable and en- 
terprising traders who have visited it, and who 
have exhibited several bushels of the salt to the 
curiosity of the people of St. Louis, where some of 
it still remains. A specimen of the salt has been 
sent to Marietta. This mountain is said to be 180 
miles long and 45 in width, composed of solid rock 
salt, without any trees or even shrubs on it." One 
Federalist wit insisted that this salt mountain must 
be Lot's wife; another sent an epigram to the 
United States Gazette which ran as follows : 

Herostratus of old, to eternalize his name 
Sat the temple of Diana all in a flame; 
But Jefferson lately of Bonaparte bought. 
To pickle his fame, a mountain of salt. 

JefiFerson was too much of a philosopher to be dis- 
turbed by such gibes; but he did have certain con- 
stitutional doubts concerning the treaty. How, as 
a strict constructionist, was he to defend the pur- 
chase of territory outside the limits of the United 
States, when the Constitution did not specifically 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 81 

grant such power to the Federal Government? He 
had fought the good fight of the year 1800 to oust 
Federalist administrators who by a liberal interpre- 
tation were making waste paper of the Constitu- 
tion. Consistency demanded either that he should 
abandon the treaty or that he should ask for the 
powers which had been denied to the Federal Gov- 
ernment. He chose the latter course and submitted 
to his Cabinet and to his followers in Congress a 
draft of an amendment to the Constitution confer- 
ring the desired powers. To his dismay they 
treated his proposal with indifference, not to say 
coldness. He pressed his point, redrafted his 
amendment, and urged its consideration once 
again. Meantime letters from Livingston and 
Monroe warned him that delay was hazardous ; the 
First Consul might change his mind, as he was 
wont to do on slight provocation. Privately Jeffer- 
son was deeply chagrined, but he dared not risk the 
loss of Louisiana. With what grace he could sum- 
mon, he acquiesced in the advice of his Virginia 
friends who urged him to let events take their 
course and to drop the amendment, but he con- 
tinued to believe that such a course if persisted in 
would make blank paper of the Constitution. He 
could only trust, as he said in a letter, "that the 



82 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

good sense of the country will correct the evil of 
construction when it shall produce its ill effects." 

The debates on the treaty in Congress make in- 
teresting reading for those who delight in legal 
subtleties, for many nice questions of constitutional 
law were involved. Even granting that territory 
could be acquired, there was the further question 
whether the treaty-making power was competent 
irrespective of the House of Representatives. And 
what, pray, was meant by incorporating this new 
province in the Union? Was Louisiana to be ad- 
mitted into the Union as a State by President and 
Senate.^^ Or was it to be governed as a dependency? 
And how could the special privileges given to Span- 
ish and French ships in the port of New Orleans be 
reconciled with that provision of the Constitution 
which expressly forbade any preference to be given, 
by any regulation of commerce or revenue, to the 
ports of one State over those of another? The exi- 
gencies of politics played havoc with consistency, so 
that Republicans supported the ratification of the 
treaty with erstwhile Federalist arguments, while 
Federalists used the old arguments of the Republi- 
cans. Yet the Senate advised the ratification by a 
decisive vote and with surprising promptness; and 
Congress passed a provisional act authorizing the 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 83 

President to take over and govern the territory 
of Louisiana. 



The vast province which Napoleon had tossed so 
carelessly into the lap of the young Western Re- 
public was, strangely enough, not yet formally in 
his possession. The expeditionary force under 
General Victor which was to have occupied Louisi- 
ana had never left port. M. Pierre Clement Laus- 
sat, however, who was to have accompanied the 
expedition to assume the duties of prefect in the 
province, had sailed alone in January, 1803, to re- 
ceive the province from the Spanish authorities. 
If this lonely Frenchman on mission possessed the 
imagination of his race, he must have had some 
emotional thrills as he reflected that he was follow- 
ing the sea trail of La Salle and Iberville through 
the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He could 
not have entered the Great River and breasted its 
yellow current for a hundred miles, without seeing 
in his mind's eye those phantom figures of French 
and Spanish adventurers who had voyaged up and 
down its turbid waters in quest of gold or of distant 
Cathay. As his vessel dropped anchor opposite 
the town which Bienville had founded, Laussat 
must have felt that in some degree he was "heir of 



84 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

all the ages"; yet he was in fact face to face with 
conditions which, whatever their historic antece- 
dents, were neither French nor Spanish. On the 
water front of New Orleans, he counted "forty-five 
Anglo-American ships to ten French." Subsequent 
experiences deepened this first impression: it was 
not Spanish nor French influence which had made 
this port important but those "three hundred 
thousand planters who in twenty years have 
swarmed over the eastern plains of the Mississippi 
and have cultivated them, and who have no other 
outlet than this river and no other port than 
New Orleans." 

The outward aspect of the city, however, was 
certainly not American. From the masthead of his 
vessel Laussat might have seen over a thousand 
dwellings of varied architecture: houses of adobe, 
houses of brick, houses of stucco; some with bright 
colors, others with the harmonious half tones pro- 
duced by sun and rain. No American artisans con- 
structed the picturesque balconies, the verandas, 
and belvederes which suggested the semi-tropical 
existence that Nature forced upon these city dwel- 
lers for more than half the year. No American 
craftsmen wrought the artistic ironwork of balco- 
nies, gateways, and window gratings. Here was an 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 85 

atmosphere which suggested the Old World rather 
than the New. The streets which ran at right 
angles were reminiscent of the old regime: Conde, 
Conti, Dauphine, St. Louis, Chartres, Bourbon, 
Orleans — all these names were to be found within 
the earthen rampart which formed the defense of 
the city. 

The inhabitants were a strange mixture: Span- 
ish, French, American, black, quadroon, and Cre- 
ole. No adequate definition has ever been formu- 
lated for "Creole," but no one familiar with the 
type could fail to distinguish this caste from those 
descended from the first French settlers or from the 
Acadians. A keen observer like Laussat discerned 
speedily that the Creole had little place in the com- 
mercial life of the city. He was your landed pro- 
prietor, who owned some of the choicest parts of 
the city and its growing suburbs, and whose planta- 
tions lined both banks of the Mississippi within 
easy reach from the city. At the opposite end of 
the social scale were the quadroons — the demi- 
monde of this little capital — and the negro slaves. 
Between these extremes were the French and, in 
ever-growing numbers, the Americans who plied 
every trade, while the Spaniards constituted the 
governing class. 



86 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Deliberately, in the course of time, as befitted a 
Spanish gentleman and oflScer, the Marquis de Casa 
Calvo, resplendent with regalia, arrived from Ha- 
vana to act with Governor Don Juan Manuel de 
Salcedo in transferring the province. A season of 
gayety followed in which the Spaniards did their 
best to conceal any chagrin they may have felt at 
the relinquishment — happily, it might not be 
termed the surrender — of Louisiana. And finally 
on the 30th of November, Governor Salcedo deliv- 
ered the keys of the city to Laussat, in the hall of 
the Cabildo, while Marquis de Casa Calvo from the 
balcony absolved the people in Place d'Armes be- 
low from their allegiance to his master, the King 
of Spain. 

For the brief term of twenty days Louisiana was 
again a province of France. Within that time 
Laussat bestirred himself to gallicize the colony, so 
far as forms could do so. He replaced the cabildo 
or hereditary council by a municipal council; he 
restored the civil code; he appointed French officers 
to civil and military posts. And all this he did in 
the full consciousness that American commissioners 
were already on their way to receive from him 
in turn the province which his wayward master 
had sold. On December 20, 1803, young William 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 87 

Claiborne, Governor of the Mississippi Territory, 
and General James Wilkinson, with a few compa- 
nies of soldiers, entered and received from Laussat 
the keys of the city and the formal surrender of 
Lower Louisiana. On the Place d'Armes, promptly 
at noon, the tricolor was hauled down and the Amer- 
ican Stars and Stripes took its place. Louisiana had 
been transferred for the sixth and last time. But 
what were the metes and bounds of this province 
which had been so often bought and sold.f^ What 
had Laussat been instructed to take and give .f* What, 
in short, was Louisiana. ^^ 

The elation which Livingston and Monroe felt at 
acquiring unexpectedly a vast territory beyond the 
Mississippi soon gave way to a disquieting reflec- 
tion. They had been instructed to offer ten million 
dollars for New Orleans and the Floridas : they had 
pledged fifteen millions for Louisiana without the 
Floridas. And they knew that it was precisely 
West Florida, with the eastern bank of the Missis- 
sippi and the Gulf littoral, that was most ardently 
desired by their countrymen of the West. But 
might not Louisiana include West Florida.'* Had 
Talleyrand not professed ignorance of the eastern 
boundary? And had he not intimated that the 



88 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Americans would make the most of their bargain? 
Within a month Livingston had convinced himself 
that the United States could rightfully claim West 
Florida to the Perdido River, and he soon won over 
Monroe to his way of thinking. They then re- 
ported to Madison that "on a thorough examina- 
tion of the subject" they were persuaded that they 
had purchased West Florida as a part of Louisiana. 

By what process of reasoning had Livingston and 
Monroe reached this satisfying conclusion.'* Their 
argument proceeded from carefully chosen prem- 
ises. France, it was said, had once held Louisi- 
ana and the Floridas together as part of her colonial 
empire in America; in 1763 she had ceded New Or- 
leans and the territory west of the Mississippi to 
Spain, and at the same time she had transferred the 
Floridas to Great Britain; in 1783 Great Britain 
had returned the Floridas to Spain which were then 
reunited to Louisiana as under French rule. Ergo, 
when Louisiana was retro-ceded "with the same ex- 
tent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that 
it had when France possessed it," it must have 
included West Florida. 

That Livingston was able to convince himself by 
this logic, does not speak well for his candor or in- 
telligence. He was well aware that Bonaparte had 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 89 

failed to persuade Don Carlos to include the Flori- 
das in the retrocession ; he had tried to insert in the 
treaty an article pledging the First Consul to use 
his good offices to obtain the Floridas for the 
United States; and in his midnight dispatch to 
Madison, with the prospect of acquiring Louisiana 
before him, he had urged the advisability of ex- 
changing this province for the more desirable Flori- 
das. Livingston therefore could not, and did not, 
say that Spain intended to cede the Floridas as a 
part of Louisiana, but that she had inadvertently 
done so and that Bonaparte might have claimed 
West Florida, if he had been shrewd enough to see 
his opportunity. The United States was in no 
way prevented from pressing this claim because 
the First Consul had not done so. The fact that 
France had in 1763 actually dismembered her colo- 
nial empire and that Louisiana as ceded to Spain 
extended only to the Iberville, was given no weight 
in Livingston's deductions. 

Having the will to believe, Jejfferson and Madison 
became converts to Livingston's faith. Madison 
wrote at once that in view of these developments 
no proposal to exchange Louisiana for the Flori- 
das should be entertained; the President declared 
himself satisfied that "our right to the Perdido is 



90 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

substantial and can be opposed by a quibble on 
form only"; and John Randolph, duly coached by 
the Administration, flatly declared in the House 
of Representatives that *'We have not only ob- 
tained the command of the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, but of the Mobile, with its widely extended 
branches; and there is not now a single stream of 
note rising within the United States and falling into 
the Gulf of Mexico which is not entirely our own, 
the Appalachicola excepted." From this moment 
to the end of his administration, the acquisition 
of West Florida became a sort of obsession with 
Jefferson. His pursuit of this phantom claim 
involved American diplomats in strange adven- 
tures and at times deflected the whole course of 
domestic politics. 

The first luckless minister to engage in this baf- 
fling quest was James Monroe, who had just been 
appointed Minister to the Court of St. James. He 
was instructed to take up the threads of diplomacy 
at Madrid where they were getting badly tangled 
in the hands of Charles Pinckney, who was a better 
politician than a diplomat. "Your inquiries may 
also be directed," wrote Madison, "to the question 
whether any, and how much, of what passes for 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 91 

West Florida be fairly included in the territory 
ceded to us by France." Before leaving Paris on 
this mission, Monroe made an effort to secure the 
good offices of the Emperor, but he found Talley- 
rand cold and cynical as ever. He was given to 
understand that it was all a question of money; if 
the United States were willing to pay the price, the 
Emperor could doubtless have the negotiations 
transferred to Paris and put the deal through. A 
loan of seventy million livres to Spain, which would 
be passed over at once to France, would probably 
put the United States into possession of the coveted 
territory. As an honest man Monroe shrank from 
this sort of jobbery; besides, he could hardly offer 
to buy a territory which his Government asserted 
it had already bought with Louisiana. With the 
knowledge that he was defying Napoleon, or at 
least his ministers, he started for Madrid to play 
a lone hand in what he must have known was a 
desperate game. 

The conduct of the Administration during the 
next few months was hardly calculated to smooth 
Monroe's path. In the following February (1804) 
President Jefferson put his signature to an act 
which was designed to give effect to the laws of the 
United States in the newly acquired territory. The 



92 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

fourth section of this so-called Mobile Act included 
explicitly within the revenue district of Mississippi 
all the navigable waters lying within the United 
States and emptying into the Gulf east of the Mis- 
sissippi — an extraordinary provision indeed, since 
unless the Floridas were a part of the United States 
there were no rivers within the limits of the United 
States emptying into the Gulf east of the Missis- 
sippi. The eleventh section was even more remark- 
able since it gave the President authority to erect 
Mobile Bay and River into a separate revenue 
district and to designate a port of entry. 

This cool appropriation of Spanish territory was 
too much for the excitable Spanish Minister, Don 
Carlos Martinez Yrujo, who burst into Madison's 
oflSce one morning with a copy of the act in his 
hand and with angry protests on his lips. He had 
been on excellent terms with Madison and had 
enjoyed Jefferson's friendship and hospitality at 
Monticello; but he was the accredited representa- 
tive of His Catholic Majesty and bound to defend 
his sovereignty. He fairly overwhelmed the timid 
Madison with reproaches that could never be for- 
given or forgotten; and from this moment he was 
persona non grata in the Department of State. 

Madison doubtless took Yrujo's reproaches more 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 93 

to heart just because he felt himself in a false posi- 
tion. The Administration had allowed the transfer 
of Louisiana to be made in the full knowledge that 
Laussat had been instructed to claim Louisiana as 
far as the Rio Bravo on the west but only as far as 
the Iberville on the east. Laussat had finally ad- 
mitted as much confidentially to the American 
commissioners. Yet the Administration had not 
protested. And now it was acting on the assump- 
tion that it might dispose of the Gulf littoral, 
the West Florida coast, as it pleased. Madison 
was bound to admit in his heart of hearts that 
Yrujo had reason to be angry. A few weeks later 
the President relieved the tense situation, though at 
the price of an obvious evasion, by issuing a procla- 
mation which declared all the shores and waters 
"lying within the boundaries of the United States"^ 
to be a revenue district with Fort Stoddert as the 
port of entry. But the mischief had been done and 
no constructive interpretation of the act by the 
President could efface the impression first made 
upon the mind of Yrujo. Congress had meant to 
appropriate West Florida and the President had 
suffered the bill to become law. 

Nor was Pinckney's conduct at Madrid likely to 

' The italics are President Jefferson's. 



94 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

make Monroe's mission easier. Two years before, 
in 1802, he had negotiated a convention by which 
Spain agreed to pay indemnity for depredations 
committed by her cruisers in the late war between 
France and the United States. This convention 
had been ratified somewhat tardily by the Senate 
and now waited on the pleasure of the Spanish Gov- 
ernment. Pinckney was instructed to press for the 
ratification by Spain, which was taken for granted; 
but he was explicitly warned to leave the matter of 
the Florida claims to Monroe. When he presented 
the demands of his Government to Cevallos, the 
Foreign Minister, he was met in turn with a de- 
mand for explanations. What, pray, did his Gov- 
ernment mean by this act? To Pinckney 's aston- 
ishment, he was confronted with a copy of the Mo- 
bile Act, which Yrujo had forwarded. The South 
Carolinian replied, in a tone that was not calculated 
to soothe ruffied feelings, that he had already been 
advised that West Florida was included in the Lou- 
isiana purchase and had so reported to Cevallos. 
He urged that the two subjects be kept separate 
and begged His Excellency to have confidence in 
the honor and justice of the United States. Delays 
followed until Cevallos finally declared sharply 
that the treaty would be ratified only on several 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 95 

conditions, one of which was that the Mobile Act 
should be revoked. Pinckney then threw discre- 
tion to the winds and announced that he would 
ask for his passports; but his bluster did not 
change Spanish policy, and he dared not carry out 
his threat. 

It was under these circumstances that Monroe 
arrived in Madrid on his diflScult mission. He was 
charged with the delicate task of persuading a Gov- 
ernment whose pride had been touched to the quick 
to ratify the claims convention, to agree to a com- 
mission to adjudicate other claims which it had re- 
fused to recognize, to yield West Florida as a part 
of the Louisiana purchase, and to accept two mil- 
lion dollars for the rest of Florida east of the Per- 
dido River. In preparing these extraordinary in- 
structions, the Secretary of State labored under the 
hallucination that Spain, on the verge of war with 
England, would pay handsomely for the friendship 
of the United States, quite forgetting that the real 
master of Spain was at Paris. 

The story of Monroe's five weary months in 
Spain may be briefly told. He was in the unstrate- 
gic position of one who asks for everything and can 
concede nothing. Only one consideration could 
probably have forced the Spanish Government to 



96 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

yield, and that was fear. Spain had now declared 
war upon England and might reasonably be sup- 
posed to prefer a solid accommodation with the 
United States, as Madison intimated, rather than 
add to the number of her foes. But Cevallos ex- 
hibited no signs of fear; on the contrary he pro- 
fessed an amiable willingness to discuss every point 
at great length. Every effort on the part of the 
American to reach a conclusion was adroitly elud- 
ed. It was a game in which the Spaniard had no 
equal. At last, when indubitable assurances came 
to Monroe from Paris that Napoleon would not 
suffer Spain to make the slightest concession either 
in the matter of spoliation claims or any other 
claims, and that, in the event of a break between 
the United States and Spain, he would surely take 
the part of Spain, Monroe abandoned the game and 
asked for his passports. Late in May he returned 
to Paris, where he joined with General Armstrong, 
who had succeeded Livingston, in urging upon the 
Administration the advisability of seizing Texas, 
leaving West Florida alone for the present. 

Months of vacillation followed the failure of 
Monroe's mission. The President could not shake 
off his obsession, and yet he lacked the resolution to 
employ force to take either Texas, which he did not 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 97 

want but was entitled to, or West Florida which he 
ardently desired but whose title was in dispute. It 
was not until November of the following year 
(1805) that the Administration determined on a 
definite policy. In a meeting of the Cabinet "I 
proposed," Jefferson recorded in a memorandum, 
"we should address ourselves to France, informing 
her it was a last effort at amicable settlement with 
Spain and offer to her, or through her," a sum not 
to exceed five million dollars for the Floridas. The 
chief obstacle in the way of this programme was the 
uncertain mood of Congress, for a vote of credit 
was necessary and Congress might not take kindly 
to Napoleon as intermediary. Jefferson then set to 
work to draft a message which would "alarm the 
fears of Spain by a vigorous language, in order to 
induce her to join us in appealing to the interference 
of the Emperor." 

The message sent to Congress alluded briefly to 
the negotiations with Spain and pointed out the 
unsatisfactory relations which still obtained. Spain 
had shown herself unwilling to adjust claims or 
the boundaries of Louisiana; her depredations on 
American commerce had been renewed; arbitrary 
duties and vexatious searches continued to obstruct 
American shipping on the Mobile; inroads had 



98 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

been made on American territory; Spanish officers 
and soldiers had seized the property of American 
citizens. It was hoped that Spain would view these 
injuries in their proper hght; if not, then the United 
States "must join in the unprofitable contest of try- 
ing which party can do the other the most harm. 
Some of these injuries may perhaps admit a peace- 
able remedy. Where that is competent, it is always 
the most desirable. But some of them are of a na- 
ture to be met by force only, and all of them may 
lead to it." 

Coming from the pen of a President who had de- 
clared that peace was his passion, these belligerent 
words caused some bewilderment but, on the whole, 
very considerable satisfaction in Republican cir- 
cles, where the possibility of rupture had been free- 
ly discussed. The people of the Southwest took the 
President at his word and looked forward with en- 
thusiasm to a war which would surely overthrow 
Spanish rule in the Floridas and yield the cov- 
eted lands along the Gulf of Mexico. The country 
awaited with eagerness those further details which 
the President had promised to set forth in another 
message. These were felt to be historic moments 
full of dramatic possibilities. 

Three days later, behind closed doors. Congress 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 99 

listened to the special message which was to put the 
nation to the supreme test. Alas for those who had 
expected a trumpet call to battle. Never was a 
state paper better calculated to wither martial 
spirit. In dull fashion it recounted the events of 
Monroe's unlucky mission and announced the ad- 
vance of Spanish forces in the Southwest, which, 
however, the President had not repelled, conceiv- 
ing that "Congress alone is constitutionally in- 
vested with the power of changing our condition 
from peace to war." He had "barely instructed" 
our forces "to patrol the borders actually delivered 
to us." It soon dawned upon the dullest intelli- 
gence that the President had not the slightest in- 
tention to recommend a declaration of war. On 
the contrary, he was at pains to point out the path 
to peace. There was reason to believe that France 
was now disposed to lend her aid in effecting a set- 
tlement with Spain, and "not a moment should be 
lost in availing ourselves of it." "Formal war is 
not necessary, it is not probable it will follow; but 
the protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor 
of our country, require that force should be in- 
terposed to a certain degree. It will probably 
contribute to advance the object of peace." 
After the warlike tone of the first message, this 



100 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

sounded like a retreat. It outraged the feelings of 
the war party. It was, to their minds, an anticlimax, 
a pusillanimous surrender. None was angrier than 
John Randolph of Virginia, hitherto the leader 
of the forces of the Administration in the House. 
He did not hesitate to express his disgust with "this 
double set of opinions and principles"; and his 
anger mounted when he learned that as Chairman 
of the Committee on Ways and Means he was ex- 
pected to propose and carry through an appropria- 
tion of two million dollars for the purchase of 
Florida. Further interviews with the President 
and the Secretary of State did not mollify him, for, 
according to his version of these conversations, he 
was informed that France would not permit Spain 
to adjust her differences with the United States, 
which had, therefore, the alternative of paying 
France handsomely or of facing a war with both 
France and Spain. Then Randolph broke loose 
from all restraint and swore by all his gods that 
he would not assume responsibility for "deliver- 
ing the public purse to the first cut-throat that 
demanded it." 

Randolph's opposition to the Florida programme 
was more than an unpleasant episode in Jefferson's 
administration; it proved to be the beginning of a 



IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS 101 

revolt which was fatal to the President's diplomacy, 
for Randolph passed rapidly from passive to active 
opposition and fought the two-million dollar bill 
to the bitter end. When the House finally out- 
voted him and his faction, soon to be known as the 
"Quids,'* and the Senate had concurred, precious 
weeks had been lost. Yet Madison must bear some 
share of blame for the delay since, for some reason, 
never adequately explained, he did not send in- 
structions to Armstrong until four weeks after the 
action of Congress. It was then too late to bait the 
master of Europe. Just what had happened Arm- 
strong could not ascertain ; but when Napoleon set 
out in October, 1806, on that fateful campaign 
which crushed Prussia at Jena and Auerstadt, the 
chance of acquiring Florida had passed. 



CHAPTER VI 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 



With the transfer of Louisiana, the United States 
entered upon its first experience in governing an 
ahen civihzed people. At first view there is some- 
thing incongruous in the attempt of the young Re- 
pubhc, founded upon the consent of the governed, 
to rule over a people whose land had been annexed 
without their consent and whose preferences in the 
matter of government had never been consulted. 
The incongruity appears the more striking when it 
is recalled that the author of the Declaration of In- 
dependence was now charged with the duty of ap- 
pointing all officers, civil and military, in the new 
territory. King George III had never ruled more 
autocratically over any of his North American 
colonies than President Jefferson over Louisiana 
through Governor William Claiborne and General 
James Wilkinson. 

The leaders among the Creoles and better class 

102 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 103 

of Americans counted on a speedy escape from this 
autocratic government, which was confessedly tem- 
porary. The terms of the treaty, indeed, encour- 
aged the hope that Louisiana would be admitted at 
once as a State. The inhabitants of the ceded terri- 
tory were to be "incorporated into the Union." 
But Congress gave a different interpretation to 
these words and dashed all hopes by the act of 1804, 
which, while it conceded a legislative council, made 
its members and all officers appointive, and di- 
vided the province. A delegation of Creoles went 
to Washington to protest against this inconsiderate 
treatment. They bore a petition which contained 
many stiletto-like thrusts at the President. What 
about those elemental rights of representation and 
election which had figured in the glorious contest 
for freedom? " Do political axioms on the Atlantic 
become problems when transferred to the shores of 
the Mississippi.^" To such arguments Congress 
could not remain wholly indifferent. The outcome 
was a third act (March 2, 1805) which established 
the usual form of territorial government, an elec- 
tive legislature, a delegate in Congress, and a Gover- 
nor appointed by the President. To a people who 
had counted on statehood these concessions were 
small pinchbeck. Their irritation was not allayed, 



104 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

and it continued to focus upon Governor Claiborne, 
the distrusted agent of a government which they 
neither liked nor respected. 

Strange currents and counter-currents ran 
through the life of this distant province. Casa Cal- 
vo and Morales, the former Spanish officials, con- 
tinued to reside in the city, like spiders at the center 
of a web of Spanish intrigue; and the threads of 
their web extended to West Florida, where Gover- 
nor Folch watched every movement of Americans 
up and down the Mississippi, and to Texas, where 
Salcedo, Captain-General of the Internal Provinces 
of Mexico, waited for overt aggressions from land- 
hungry American frontiersmen. All these Spanish 
agents knew that Monroe had left Madrid empty- 
handed yet still asserting claims that were ill-dis- 
guised threats; but none of them knew whether the 
impending blow would fall upon West Florida or 
Texas. Then, too, right under their eyes was the 
Mexican Association, formed for the avowed pur- 
pose of collecting information about Mexico which 
would be useful if the United States should become 
involved in war with Spain. In the city, also, were 
adventurous individuals ready for any daring 
move upon Mexico, where, according to credible re- 
ports, a revolution was imminent. The conquest of 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 105 

Mexico was the day-dream of many an adventurer. 
In his memoir advising Bonaparte to take and hold 
Louisiana as an impenetrable barrier to Mexico, 
Pontalba had said with strong conviction: "It is 
the surest means of destroying forever the bold 
schemes with which several individuals in the 
United States never cease filling the newspapers, 
by designating Louisiana as the highroad to the 
conquest of Mexico." 

Into this web of intrigue walked the late Vice- 
President of the United States, leisurely journeying 
through the Southwest in the summer of 1805. 

Aaron Burr is one of the enigmas of American 
politics. Something of the mystery and romance 
that shroud the evil-doings of certain Italian des- 
pots of the age of the Renaissance envelops him. 
Despite the researches of historians, the tangled 
web of Burr's conspiracy has never been unrav- 
eled. It remains the most fascinating though, 
perhaps, the least important episode in Jefferson's 
administration. Yet Burr himself repays study, 
for his activities touch many sides of contempo- 
rary society and illuminate many dark corners in 
American politics. 

According to the principles of eugenics. Burr was 



106 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

well-born, and by all the laws of this pseudo-science 
should have left an honorable name behind him. 
His father was a Presbyterian clergyman, sound in 
the faith, who presided over the infancy of the 
College of New Jersey; his maternal grandfather 
was that massive divine, Jonathan Edwards. Af- 
ter graduating at Princeton, Burr began to study 
law but threw aside his law books on hearing the 
news of Lexington. He served with distinction 
under Arnold before Quebec, under Washington 
in the battle of Long Island, and later at Mon- 
mouth, and retired with the rank of lieutenant 
colonel in 1779. Before the close of the Revolu- 
tion he had begun the practice of law in New 
York, and had married the widow of a British 
army officer; entering politics, he became in turn 
a member of the State Assembly, Attorney-Gen- 
eral, and United States Senator. But a mere 
enumeration of such details does not tell the story 
of Burr's life and character. Interwoven with 
the strands of his public career is a bewildering 
succession of intrigues and adventures in which 
women have a conspicuous part, for Burr was a 
fascinating man and disarmed distrust by avoid- 
ing any false assumption of virtue. His mar- 
riage, however, proved happy. He adored his 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 107 

wife and fairly worshiped his strikingly beautiful 
daughter Theodosia. 

Burr throve in the atmosphere of intrigue. New 
York politics afforded his proper milieu. How he 
ingratiated himself with politicians of high and low 
degree; how he unlocked the doors to political pre- 
ferment; how he became one of the first bosses of 
the city of New York; how he combined public 
service with private interest; how he organized the 
voters — no documents disclose. Only now and 
then the enveloping fog lifts, as, for example, dur- 
ing the memorable election of 1800, when the igno- 
rant voters of the seventh ward, duly drilled and 
marshaled, carried the city for the Republicans, 
and not even Colonel Hamilton, riding on his white 
horse from precinct to precinct, could stay the rout. 
That election carried New York for Jefferson and 
made Burr the logical candidate of the party for 
Vice-President. 

These political strokes betoken a brilliant if not 
always a steady and reliable mind. Burr, it must 
be said, was not trusted even by his political asso- 
ciates. It is significant that Washington, a keen 
judge of men, refused to appoint Burr as Min- 
ister to France to succeed Morris because he was 
not convinced of his integrity. And Jefferson 



108 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

shared these misgivings, though the exigencies of 
poHties made him dissemble his feehngs. It is 
significant, also, that Burr was always surrounded 
by men of more than doubtful intentions — place- 
hunters and self-seeking politicians, who had the 
gambler's instinct. 

As Vice-Pi. esident. Burr could not hope to exert 
much influence upon the Administration, since the 
office in itself conferred little power and did not 
even, according to custom, make him a member of 
the Cabinet; but as Republican boss of New York 
who had done more than any one man to secure the 
election of the ticket in 1800, he might reasonably 
expect Jefferson and his Virginia associates to treat 
him with consideration in the distribution of pa- 
tronage. To his intense chagrin, he was ignored; 
not only ignored but discredited, for Jefferson de- 
liberately allied himself with the Clintons and the 
Livingstons, the rival factions in New York which 
were bent upon driving Burr from the party. This 
treatment filled Burr's heart with malice; but he 
nursed his wounds in secret and bided his time. 

Realizing that he was politically bankrupt, Burr 
made a liazard of new fortunes in 1804 by offering 
himself as candidate for Governor of New York, an 
office then held by George Clinton. Early in the 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 109 

year he had a remarkable interview with Jefferson 
in which he observed that it was for the interest of 
the party for him to retire, but that his retirement 
under existing circumstances would be thought dis- 
creditable. He asked "some mark of favor from 
me," Jefferson wrote in his journal, "which would 
declare to the world that he retired with my confi- 
dence" — an executive appointment, in short. 
This was tantamount to an offer of peace or war. 
Jefferson declined to gratify him, and Burr then 
began an intrigue with the Federalist leaders of 
New England. 

The rise of a Republican party of challenging 
strength in New England cast Federalist leaders 
into the deepest gloom. Already troubled by the 
annexation of Louisiana, which seemed to them to 
imperil the ascendancy of New England in the 
Union, they now saw their own ascendancy in 
New England imperiled. Under the depression of 
impending disaster, men like Senator Timothy 
Pickering of Massachusetts and Roger Griswold 
of Connecticut broached to their New England 
friends the possibility of a withdrawal from the 
Union and the formation of a Northern Confeder- 
acy. As the confederacy shaped itself in Pickering's 
imagination, it would of necessity include New 



110 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

York; and the chaotic conditions in New York poli- 
tics at this time invited intrigue. When, therefore, 
a group of Burr's friends in the Legislature named 
him as their candidate for Governor, Pickering and 
Griswold seized the moment to approach him with 
their treasonable plans. They gave him to under- 
stand that as Governor of New York he would nat- 
urally hold a strategic position and could, if he 
would, take the lead in the secession of the North- 
ern States. Federalist support could be given to 
him in the approaching election. They would be 
glad to know his views. But the shifty Burr would 
not commit himself further than to promise a satis- 
factory administration. Though the Federalist in- 
triguers would have been glad of more explicit as- 
surances they counted on his vengeful temper and 
hatred of the Virginia domination at Washington 
to make him a pliable tool. They were willing to 
commit the party openly to Burr and trust to 
events to bind him to their cause. 

Against this mad intrigue one clear-headed in- 
dividual resolutely set himself — not wholly from 
disinterested motives. Alexander Hamilton had 
good reason to know Burr, He declared in pri- 
vate conversation, and the remark speedily became 
public property, that he looked upon Burr as a 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 111 

dangerous man who ought not to be trusted with 
the reins of government. He pleaded with New 
York FederaHsts not to commit the fatal blunder 
of endorsing Burr in caucus, and he finally won his 
point; but he could not prevent his partisans from 
supporting Burr at the polls. 

The defeat of Burr dashed the hopes of the Fed- 
eralists of New England; the bubble of a Northern 
Confederacy vanished. It dashed also Burr's per- 
sonal ambitions: he could no longer hope for politi- 
cal rehabilitation in New York. And the man who 
a second time had crossed his path and thwarted 
his purposes was his old rival, Alexander Hamilton. 
It is said that Burr was not naturally vindictive: 
perhaps no man is naturally vindictive. Certain it 
is that bitter disappointment had now made Burr 
what Hamilton had called him — "a dangerous 
man." He took the common course of men of 
honor at this time; he demanded prompt and un- 
qualified acknowledgment or denial of the expres- 
sion. Well aware of what lay behind this demand, 
Hamilton replied deliberately with half-concilia- 
tory words, but he ended with the usual words of 
those prepared to accept a challenge, "I can only 
regret the circumstance, and must abide the con- 
sequences." A challenge followed. We are told 



112 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

that Hamilton accepted to save his political leader- 
ship and influence — strange illusion in one so gift- 
ed! Yet public opinion had not yet condemned 
dueling, and men must be judged against the 
background of their times. 

On a summer morning (July 11, 1804) Burr and 
Hamilton crossed the Hudson to Weehawken and 
there faced each other for the last time. Hamilton 
withheld his fire; Burr aimed with murderous in- 
tent, and Hamilton fell mortally wounded. The 
shot from Burr's pistol long reverberated. It woke 
public conscience to the horror and uselessness of 
dueling, and left Burr an outlaw from respectable 
society, stunned by the recoil, and under indict- 
ment for murder. Only in the South and West did 
men treat the incident lightly as an affair of honor. 

The political career of Burr was now closed. 
"When he again met the Senate face to face, he had 
been dropped by his own party in favor of George 
Clinton, to whom he surrendered the Vice-Presiden- 
cy on March 5, 1805. His farewell address is de- 
scribed as one of the most affecting ever spoken in 
the Senate. Describing the scene to his daughter, 
Burr said that tears flowed abundantly, but Burr 
must have described what he wished to see. Amer- 
ican politicians are not Homeric heroes, who weep 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 113 

on slight provocation; and any inclination to pity 
Burr must have been inhibited by the knowledge 
that he had made himself the rallying-point of 
every dubious intrigue at the capital. 

The list of Burr's intimates included Jonathan 
Dayton, whose term as Senator had just ended, 
and who, like Burr, sought means of promoting his 
fortunes, John Smith, Senator from Ohio, the noto- 
rious Swartwouts of New York who were attached 
to Burr as gangsters to their chief, and General 
James Wilkinson, governor of the northern territo- 
ry carved out of Louisiana and commander of the 
western army with headquarters at St. Louis. 

Wilkinson had a long record of duplicity, which 
was suspected but never proved by his contempo- 
raries. There was hardly a dubious episode from 
the Revolution to this date with which he had not 
been connected. He was implicated in the Conway 
cabal against Washington; he was active in the sep- 
aratist movement in Kentucky during the Confed- 
eration; he entered into an irregular commercial 
agreement with the Spanish authorities at New 
Orleans; he was suspected — and rightly, as docu- 
ments recently unearthed in Spain prove — of hav- 
ing taken an oath of allegiance to Spain and of 
being in the pay of Spain ; he was also suspected — 



114 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

and justly — of using his influence to bring about a 
separation of the Western States from the Union; 
yet in 1791 he was given a Heutenant-colonel's com- 
mission in the regular army and served under St. 
Clair in the Northwest, and again as a brigadier- 
general under Wayne. Even here the atmosphere 
of intrigue enveloped him, and he was accused of 
inciting discontent among the Kentucky troops 
and of trying to supplant Wayne. When commis- 
sioners were trying to run the Southern boundary 
in accordance with the treaty of 1795 with Spain, 
Wilkinson — still a pensioner of Spain, as docu- 
ments prove — attempted to delay the survey. In 
the light of these revelations, Wilkinson appears as 
an unscrupulous adventurer whose thirst for lucre 
made him willing to betray either master — the 
Spaniard who pensioned him or the American who 
gave him his command. 

In the spring of 1805 Burr made a leisurely jour- 
ney across the mountains, by way of Pittsburgh, to 
New Orleans, where he had friends and personal 
followers. The secretary of the territory was one of 
his henchmen; a justice of the superior court was 
his stepson; the Creole petitionists who had come 
to Washington to secure self-government had been 
cordially received by Burr and had a lively sense of 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 115 

gratitude. On his way down the Ohio, Burr land- 
ed at Blennerhassett's Island, where an eccentric 
Irishman of that name owned an estate. Harman 
Blennerhassett was to rue the day that he enter- 
tained this fascinating guest. At Cincinnati he was 
the guest of Senator Smith, and there he also met 
Dayton. At Nashville he visited General Andrew 
Jackson, who was thrilled with the prospect of war 
with Spain; at Fort Massac he spent four days in 
close conference with General Wilkinson; and at 
New Orleans he consorted with Daniel Clark, a 
rich merchant and the most uncompromising oppo- 
nent of Governor Claiborne, and with members of 
the Mexican Association and every would-be ad- 
venturer and filibuster. In November, Burr was 
again in Washington. What was the purpose of 
this journey and what did it accomplish.'^ 

It is far easier to tell what Burr did after this mys- 
terious western expedition than what he planned 
to do. There is danger of reading too great con- 
sistency into his designs. At one moment, if we 
may believe Anthony Merry, the British Minis- 
ter, who lent an ear to Burr's proposals, he was 
plotting a revolution which should separate the 
Western States from the Union. To accomplish 
this design he needed British funds and a British 



116 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

naval force. Jonathan Dayton revealed to Yrujo 
much the same plot — which he thought was worth 
thirty or forty thousand dollars to the Spanish Gov- 
ernment. To such urgent necessity for funds 
were the conspirators driven. But Dayton add- 
ed further details to the story which may have 
been intended only to intimidate Yrujo. The revo- 
lution effected by British aid, said Dayton gravely, 
an expedition would be undertaken against Mex- 
ico. Subsequently Dayton unfolded a still more 
remarkable tale. Burr had been disappointed in 
the expectation of British aid, and he was now- 
bent upon "an almost insane plan," which was 
nothing less than the seizure of the Government 
at Washington. With the government funds 
thus obtained, and with the necessary frigates, the 
conspirators would sail for New Orleans and pro- 
claim the independence of Louisiana and the 
Western States. 

The kernel of truth in these accounts is not easily 
separated from the chaff. The supposition that 
Burr seriously contemplated a separation of the 
Western States from the Union may be dismissed 
from consideration. The loyalty of the Mississippi 
Valley at this time is beyond question; and Burr 
was too keen an observer not to recognize the 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 117 

temper of the people with whom he sojourned. But 
there is reason to beheve that he and his confeder- 
ates may have planned an enterprise against Mexi- 
co, for such a project was quite to the taste of 
Westerners who hated Spain as ardently as they 
loved the Union. Circumstances favored a filibus- 
tering expedition. The President's bellicose mes- 
sage of December had prepared the people of the 
Mississippi Valley for war; the Spanish plotters 
had been expelled from Louisiana; Spanish forces 
had crossed the Sabine; American troops had been 
sent to repel them if need be; the South Amer- 
ican revolutionist Miranda had sailed, with ves- 
sels fitted out in New York, to start a revolt 
against Spanish rule in Caracas ; every revolution- 
ist in New Orleans was on the qui vive. What 
better time could there be to launch a filibuster- 
ing expedition against Mexico.'^ If it succeeded 
and a republic were established, the American 
Government might be expected to recognize a 
fait accompli. 

The success of Burr's plans, whatever they may 
have been, depended on his procuring funds; and it 
was doubtless the hope of extracting aid from 
Blennerhassett that drew him to the island in 
midsummer of 1806. Burr was accompanied by 



118 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

his daughter Theodosia and her husband, Joseph 
Alston, a wealthy South Carolina planter, who was 
either the dupe or the accomplice of Burr. Togeth- 
er they persuaded the credulous Irishman to pur- 
chase a tract of land on the Washita River in the 
heart of Louisiana, which would ultimately net 
him a profit of a million dollars when Louisiana 
became an independent state with Burr as ruler 
and England as protector. They even assured 
Blennerhassett that he should go as minister to 
England. He was so dazzled at the prospect that 
he not only made the initial payment for the lands, 
but advanced all his property for Burr's use on 
receiving a guaranty from Alston. Having landed 
his fish, Burr set off down the river to visit General 
Jackson at Nashville and to procure boats and 
supplies for his expedition. 

Meanwhile, Theodosia — the brilliant, fascin- 
nating Theodosia — and her husband played the 
game at Blennerhassett's Island. Blennerhassett's 
head was completely turned. He babbled most in- 
discreetly about the approaching coup d'Hat. Colo- 
nel Burr would be king of Mexico, he told his gar- 
dener, and Mrs. Alston would be queen when Colo- 
nel Burr died. Who could resist the charms of this 
young princess? Blennerhassett and his wife were 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 119 

impatient to exchange their little isle for marble 
halls in far away Mexico. 

But all was not going well with the future Em- 
peror of Mexico. Ugly rumors were afloat. The 
active preparations at Blennerhassett's Island, the 
building of boats at various points along the 
river, the enlistment of recruits, coupled with 
liints of secession, disturbed such loyal citizens as 
the District-Attorney at Frankfort, Kentucky. 
He took it upon himself to warn the President, 
and then, in open court, charged Burr with vio- 
lating the laws of the United States by setting 
on foot a military expedition against Mexico and 
with inciting citizens to rebellion in the Western 
States. But at the meeting of the grand jury 
Burr appeared surrounded by his friends and with 
young Henry Clay for counsel. The grand jury 
refused to indict him and he left the court in tri- 
umph. Some weeks later the District-Attorney 
renewed his motion; but again Burr was dis- 
charged by the grand jury, amid popular applause. 
Enthusiastic admirers in Frankfort even gave a 
ball in his honor. 

Notwithstanding these warnings of conspiracy, 
President Jefferson exhibited a singular indiffer- 
ence and composure. To all alarmists he made the 



120 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

same reply. The people of the West were loyal 
and could be trusted. It was not until disquieting 
and ambiguous messages from Wilkinson reached 
Washington — disquieting because ambiguous — 
that the President was persuaded to act. On the 
27th of November, he issued a proclamation warn- 
ing all good citizens that sundry persons were con- 
spiring against Spain and enjoining all Federal 
oflBcers to apprehend those engaged in the unlawful 
enterprise. The appearance of this proclamation 
at Nashville should have led to Burr's arrest, for he 
was still detained there; but mysterious influences 
seemed to paralyze the arm of the Government. 
On the 22d of December, Burr set off, with two 
boats which Jackson had built and some supplies, 
down the Cumberland. At the mouth of the 
river, he joined forces with Blennerhassett, who 
had left his island in haste just as the Ohio militia 
was about to descend upon him. The combined 
strength of the flotilla was nine bateaux carrying 
less than sixty men. There was still time to in- 
tercept the expedition at Fort Massac, but again 
delays that have never been explained prevent- 
ed the President's proclamation from arriving in 
time; and Burr's little fleet floated peacefully by 
down stream. 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 121 

The scene now shifts to the lower Mississippi, and 
the heavy villain of the melodrama appears on the 
stage in the uniform of a United States military 
officer — General James Wilkinson. He had been 
under orders since May 6, 1806, to repair to the 
Territory of Orleans with as little delay as possible 
and to repel any invasion east of the River Sabine; 
but it was now September and he had only just 
reached Natchitoches, where the American vol- 
unteers and militiamen from Louisiana and Mis- 
sissippi were concentrating. Much water had 
flowed under the bridge since Aaron Burr visited 
New Orleans. 

After President Jefferson's bellicose message of 
the previous December, war with Spain seemed in- 
evitable. And when Spanish troops crossed the Sa- 
bine in July and took up their post only seventeen 
miles from Natchitoches, Western Americans 
awaited only the word to begin hostilities. The 
Orleans Gazette declared that the time to repel 
Spanish aggression had come. The enemy must be 
driven beyond the Sabine. "The route from 
Natchitoches to Mexico is clear, plain, and open." 
The occasion was at hand "for conferring on our 
oppressed Spanish brethren in Mexico those ines- 
timable blessings of freedom which we ourselves 



122 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

enjoy." " Gallant Louisianians ! Now is the time 
to distinguish yourselves. . . . Should the gen- 
erous efforts of our Government to establish a free, 
independent Republican Empire in Mexico be suc- 
cessful, how fortunate, how enviable would be the 
situation in New Orleans ! " The editor who sound- 
ed this clarion call was a coadjutor of Burr. On the 
flood tide of a popular war against Spain, they pro- 
posed to float their own expedition. Much de- 
pended on General Wilkinson; but he had already 
written privately of subverting the Spanish Gov- 
ernment in Mexico, and carrying "our conquests 
to California and the Isthmus of Darien." 

With much swagger and braggadocio, Wilkinson 
advanced to the center of the stage. He would 
drive the Spaniards over the Sabine, though they 
outnumbered him three to one. "I believe, my 
friend," he wrote, "I shall be obliged to fight and 
to flog them." Magnificent stage thunder. But to 
Wilkinson's chagrin the Spaniards withdrew of their 
own accord. Not a Spaniard remained to contest 
his advance to the border. Yet, oddly enough, he 
remained idle in camp. Why.'* 

Some two weeks later, an emissary appeared at 
Natchitoches with a letter from Burr dated the 
29th of July, in cipher. What this letter may have 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 123 

originally contained will probably never be known, 
for only Wilkinson's version survives, and that un- 
derwent frequent revision. ' It is quite as remark- 
able for its omissions as for anything that it con- 
tains. In it there is no mention of a western up- 
rising nor of a revolution in New Orleans; but only 
the intimation that an attack is to be made upon 
Spanish possessions, presumably Mexico, with pos- 
sibly Baton Rouge as the immediate objective. 
Whether or no this letter changed W^ilkinson's plan, 
we can only conjecture. Certain it is, however, 
that about this time Wilkinson determined to de- 
nounce Burr and his associates and to play a 
double game, posing on the one hand as the savior 
of his country and on the other as a secret friend to 
Spain. After some hesitation he wrote to President 
Jefferson warning him in general terms of an expe- 
dition preparing against Vera Cruz but omitting 
all mention of Burr. Subsequently he wrote a con- 
fidential letter about this "deep, dark, and wide- 
spread conspiracy" which enmeshed all classes and 
conditions in New Orleans and might bring seven 
thousand men from the Ohio. The contents of 

' What is usually accepted as the correct version is printed by 
McCaleb in his Aaron Burr Conspiracy, pp. 74 and 75, and by 
Henry Adams in his History of the United States, vol. iii, pp. 
253-4. 



124 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Burr's mysterious letter were to be communicated 
orally to the President by the messenger who bore 
this precious warning. It was on the strength of 
these communications that the President issued his 
proclamation of the 27th of November. 

While Wilkinson was inditing these misleading 
missives to the President, he was preparing the way 
for his entry at New Orleans. To the perplexed 
and alarmed Governor he wrote: "You are sur- 
rounded by dangers of which you dream not, and 
the destruction of the American Government is se- 
riously menaced. The storm will probably burst in 
New Orleans, where I shall meet it, and triumph or 
perish!" Just five days later he wrote a letter to 
the Viceroy of Mexico which proves him beyond 
doubt the most contemptible rascal who ever wore 
an American uniform. "A storm, a revolutionary 
tempest, an infernal plot threatens the destruction 
of the empire," he wrote; the first object of attack 
would be New Orleans, then Vera Cruz, then Mexi- 
co City; scenes of violence and pillage would follow; 
let His Excellency be on his guard. To ward off 
these calamities, "I will hurl myself like a Leonidas 
into the breach." But let His Excellency remem- 
ber what risks the writer of this letter incurs, "by 
offering without orders this communication to a 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 125 

foreign power," and let him reimburse the bearer of 
this letter to the amount of 121,000 pesos which 
will be spent to shatter the plans of these bandits 
from the Ohio. 

The arrival of Wilkinson in New Orleans was 
awaited by friends and foes, with bated breath. 
The conspirators had as yet no intimation of his 
intentions: Governor Claiborne was torn by sus- 
picion of this would-be savior, for at the very time 
he was reading Wilkinson's gasconade he received a 
cryptic letter from Andrew Jackson which ran, 
"keep a watchful eye on our General and beware of 
an attack as well from your own country as Spain ! " 
If Claiborne could not trust "our General," whom 
could he trust! 

The stage was now set for the last act in the 
drama. Wilkinson arrived in the city, deliberately 
set Claiborne aside, and established a species of 
martial law, not without opposition. To justify 
his course Wilkinson swore to an affidavit based on 
Burr's letter of the 29th of July and proceeded with 
his arbitrary arrests. One by one Burr's confeder- 
ates were taken into custody. The city was kept in 
a state of alarm ; Burr's armed thousands were said 
to be on the way; the negroes were to be incited 
to revolt. Only the actual appearance of Burr's 



126 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

expedition or some extraordinary happening could 
maintain this high pitch of popular excitement and 
save Wilkinson from becoming the ridiculous victim 
of his own folly. 

On the 10th of January (1807) , after an unevent- 
ful voyage down the Mississippi, Burr's flotilla 
reached the mouth of Bayou Pierre, some thirty 
miles above Natchez. Here at length was the huge 
armada which was to shatter the Union — nine 
boats and sixty men ! Tension began to give way. 
People began to recover their sense of humor. 
Wilkinson was never in greater danger in his life, 
for he was about to appear ridiculous. It was at 
Bayou Pierre that Burr going ashore learned that 
Wilkinson had betrayed him. His first instinct was 
to flee, for if he should proceed to New Orleans he 
would fall into Wilkinson's hands and doubtless 
be court-martialed and shot; but if he tarried, he 
would be arrested and sent to Washington. Inde- 
cision and despair seized him; and while Blenner- 
hassett and other devoted followers waited for their 
emperor to declare his intention, he found himself 
facing the acting-governor of the Mississippi Terri- 
tory with a warrant for his arrest. To the chagrin 
of his fellow conspirators. Burr surrendered tamely, 
even pusillanimously. 



AN AMERICAN CATILINE 127 

The end of the drama was near at hand. Burr 
was brought before a grand jury, and though he 
once more escaped indictment, he was put under 
bonds, quite illegally he thought, to appear when 
summoned. On the 1st of February he abandoned 
his followers to the tender mercies of the law and 
fled in disguise into the wilderness. A month later 
he was arrested near the Spanish border above 
Mobile by Lieutenant Gaines, in command at Fort 
Stoddert, and taken to Richmond. The trial that 
followed did not prove Burr's guilt, but it did prove 
Thomas Jefferson's credulity and cast grave doubts 
on James Wilkinson's loyalty.' Burr was acquit- 
ted of the charge of treason in court, but he re- 
mained under popular indictment, and his memory 
has never been wholly cleared of the suspicion 
of treason. 

' An account of the trial of Burr will be found in John Marshall 
and the Constitution by Edward S. Corwin, in The Chronicles oj 
America. 



CHAPTER Vn 

AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 

While Captain Bainbridge was eating his heart 
out in the Pasha's prison at Tripoh, his thoughts 
reverting constantly to his lost frigate, he reminded 
Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed to 
correspond, that "the greater part of our crew con- 
sists of English subjects not naturalized in Amer- 
ica." This incidental remark comes with all the 
force of a revelation to those who have fondly 
imagined that the sturdy jack- tars who manned 
the first frigates were genuine American sea-dogs. 
Still more disconcerting is the information con- 
tained in a letter from the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury to President Jefferson, some years later, to the 
effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased 
at the rate of seventy thousand a year, but that of 
the four thousand seamen required to man this 
growing mercantile marine, fully one-half were 
British subjects, presumably deserters. How are 

128 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 129 

these uncomfortable facts to be explained? Let a 
third piece of information be added. In a report of 
Admiral Nelson, dated 1803, in which he broaches 
a plan for manning the British navy, it is soberly 
stated that forty -two thousand British seamen de- 
serted "in the late war." Whenever a large convoy 
assembled at Portsmouth, added the Admiral, not 
less than a thousand seamen usually deserted from 
the navy. 

The shghtest acquaintance with the British navy 
when Nelson was winning immortal glory by his 
victory at Trafalgar must convince the most scepti- 
cal that his seamen for the most part were little bet- 
ter than galley slaves. Life on board these frigates 
was well-nigh unbearable. The average life of a 
seaman, Nelson reckoned, was forty-five years. In 
this age before processes of refrigeration had been 
invented, food could not be kept edible on long 
voyages, even in merchantmen. Still worse was 
the fare on men-of-war. The health of a crew was 
left to Providence. Little or no forethought was 
exercised to prevent disease; the commonest mat- 
ters of personal hygiene were neglected; and when 
disease came the remedies applied were scarcely to 
be preferred to the disease. Discipline, always bru- 
tal, was symbohzed by the cat-o'-nine-tails. Small 



130 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

wonder that the navy was avoided like the plague 
by every man and seaman. 

Yet a navy had to be maintained : it was the cor- 
nerstone of the Empire. And in all the history of 
that Empire the need of a navy was never stronger 
than in these opening years of the nineteenth cen- 
tm'y. The practice of impressing able men for the 
royal navy was as old as the reign of Elizabeth. 
The press gang was an odious institution of long 
standing — a terror not only to rogue and vaga- 
bond but to every able-bodied seafaring man and 
waterman on rivers, who was not exempted by 
some special act. It ransacked the prisons, and 
carried to the navy not only its victims but the 
germs of fever which infested public places of de- 
tention. But the press gang harvested its greatest 
crop of seamen on the seas. Merchantmen were 
stopped at sea, robbed of their able sailors, and left 
to limp short-handed into port. A British East 
Indiaman homeward bound in 1802 was stripped of 
so many of her crew in the Bay of Biscay that she 
was unable to offer resistance to a French privateer 
and fell a rich victim into the hands of the enemy. 
The necessity of the royal navy knew no law and 
often defeated its own purpose. 

Death or desertion offered the only way of escape 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 131 

to the victim of the press gang. And the com- 
mander of a British frigate dreaded making port al- 
most as much as an epidemic of typhus. The de- 
serter always found American merchantmen ready 
to harbor him. Fair wages, relatively comfortable 
quarters, and decent treatment made him quite 
ready to take any measures to forswear his alle- 
giance to Britannia. Naturalization papers were 
easily procured by a few months' residence in any 
State of the Union; and in default of legitimate pa- 
pers, certificates of citizenship could be bought for 
a song in any American seaport, where shysters 
drove a thrifty traffic in bogus documents. Pro- 
vided the English navvy took the precaution to 
have the description in his certificate tally with his 
personal appearance, and did not let his tongue 
betray him, he was reasonably safe from capture. 

Facing the palpable fact that British seamen 
were deserting just when they were most needed 
and were making American merchantmen and frig- 
ates their asylum, the British naval commanders, 
with no very nice regard for legal distinctions, ex- 
tended their search for deserters to the decks of 
American vessels, whether in British waters or on 
the high seas. If in time of war, they reasoned, 
they could stop a neutral ship on the high seas, 



'^/ 132 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

search her for contraband of war, and condemn 
ship and cargo in a prize court if carrying contra- 
band, why might they not by the same token 
search a vessel for British deserters and impress 
them into service again? Two considerations seem 
to justify this reasoning: the trickiness of the smart 
Yankees who forged citizenship papers, and the in- 
dehble character of British allegiance. Once an 
Englishman always an Englishman, by Jove! Your 
hound of a sea-dog might try to talk through his 
nose like a Yankee, you know, and he might 
shove a dirty bit of paper at you, but he couldn't 
shake off his British citizenship if he wanted to! 
This was good English law, and if it wasn't recog- 
nized by other nations so much the worse for them. 
As one of these redoubtable British captains put it, 
years later: '"Might makes right' is the guiding, 
practical maxim among nations and ever will be, 
so long as powder and shot exist, with money to 
back them, and energy to wield them." Of course, 
there were hair-splitting fellows, plenty of them, in 
England and the States, who told you that it was 
one thing to seize a vessel carrying contraband and 
have her condemned by judicial process in a court 
of admiralty, and quite another thing to carry 
British subjects off the decks of a merchantman 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 133 

flying a neutral flag; but if you knew the blasted 
rascals were deserters what difference did it make? 
Besides, what would become of the British navy, if 
you listened to all the fine-spun arguments of lands- 
men? And if these stalwart blue- water Britishers 
could have read what Thomas Jefferson was writ- 
ing at this very time, they would have classed him 
with the armchair critics who had no proper con- 
ception of a sailor's duty. "I hold the right of ex- 
patriation," wrote the President, "to be inherent in 
every man by the laws of nature, and incapable of 
being rightfully taken away from him even by the 
united will of every other person in the nation." 

In the year 1805, while President Jefferson was 
still the victim of his overmastering passion, and 
disposed to cultivate the good will of England, if 
thereby he might obtain the Floridas, unforeseen 
commercial complications arose which not only 
blocked the way to a better understanding in Span- 
ish affairs but strained diplomatic relations to the 
breaking point. News reached Atlantic seaports 
that American merchantmen, which had hitherto 
engaged with impunity in the carrying trade be- 
tween Europe and the West Indies, had been seized 
and condemned in British admiralty courts. Every 
American shipmaster and owner at once lifted up 



134 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

his voice in indignant protest; and all the latent 
hostility to their old enemy revived. Here were 
new orders-in-eouncil, said they: the leopard can- 
not change his spots. England is still England — 
the implacable enemy of neutral shipping. " Never 
will neutrals be perfectly safe till free goods make 
free ships or till England loses two or three great 
naval battles," declared the Salem Register. 

The recent seizures were not made by orders-in- 
council, however, but in accordance with a decision 
recently handed down by the court of appeals in 
the case of the ship Essex. Following a practice 
which had become common in recent years, the 
Essex had sailed with a cargo from Barcelona to 
Salem and thence to Havana. On the high seas she 
had been captured, and then taken to a British port, 
where ship and cargo were condemned because the 
voyage from Spain to her colony had been virtually 
continuous, and by the so-called Rule of 1756, di- 
rect trade between a European state and its colony 
was forbidden to neutrals in time of war when such 
trade had not been permitted in time of peace. 
Hitherto, the British courts had inclined to the 
view that when goods had been landed in a neutral 
country and duties paid, the voyage had been 
broken. Tacitly a trade that was virtually direct 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 135 

had been countenanced, because the payment of 
duties seemed evidence enough that the cargo be- 
came a part of the stock of the neutral country and, 
if reshipped, was then a bo7ia fide neutral cargo. 
Suddenly English merchants and shippers woke to 
the fact that they were often victims of deception. 
Cargoes would be landed in the United States, du- 
ties ostensibly paid, and the goods ostensibly im- 
ported, only to be reshipped in the same bottoms, 
with the connivance of port officials, either without 
paying any real duties or with drawbacks. In the 
case of the Essex the court of appeals cut directly 
athwart these practices by going behind the prima 
facie payment and inquu'ing into the intent of the 
voyage. The mere touching at a port without ac- 
tually importing the cargo into the common stock 
of the country did not alter the nature of the voy- 
age. The crucial point was the intent, which the 
court was now and hereafter determined to ascer- 
tain by examination of facts. The court reached 
the indubitable conclusion that the cargo of the 
Essex had never been intended for American mar- 
kets. The open-minded historian must admit that 
this was a fair application of the Rule of 1756, but 
he may still challenge the validity of the rule, as 
all neutral countries did, and the wisdom of the 



136 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

monopolistic impulse which moved the commercial 
classes and the com*ts of England to this decision.^ 
Had the impressment of seamen and the spoliation 
of neutral commerce occurred only on the high seas, 
public resentment would have mounted to a high 
pitch in the United States; but when British cruis- 
ers ran into American waters to capture or burn 
French vessels, and when British men-of-war block- 
aded ports, detaining and searching — and at times 
capturing — American vessels, indignation rose to 
fever heat. The blockade of New York Harbor by 
two British frigates, the Cambrian and the Leander, 
exasperated merchants beyond measure. On board 
the Leander was a young midshipman, Basil Hall, 
who in after years described the activities of this 
execrated frigate. 

Every morning at daybreak, we set about arresting 
the progress of all the vessels we saw, firing off guns to 
the right and left to make every ship that was running 
in heave to, or wait until we had leisure to send a boat 
on board "to see," in our lingo, "what she was made 
of." I have frequently known a dozen, and sometimes 

' Professor William E. Lingelbach in a notable article on "Eng- 
land and Neutral Trade" in The Military Historian and Economist 
(April, 1917) has pointed out the error committed by almost every 
historian from Henry Adams down, that the Essex decision re- 
versed previous rulings of the court and was not in accord with 
British law. 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 137 

a couple of dozen, ships lying a league or two off the 
port, losing their fair wind, their tide, and worse than 
all their market, for many hours, sometimes the whole 
day, before our search was completed/ 

One day in April, 1806, the Leander, trying to 
halt a merchantman that she meant to search, 
fired a shot which killed the helmsman of a passing 
sloop. The boat sailed on to New York with the 
mangled body; and the captain, brother of the mur- 
dered man, lashed the populace into a rage by his 
mad words. Supplies for the frigates were inter- 
cepted, personal violence was threatened to any 
British officers caught on shore, the captain of the 
Leander was indicted for murder, and the funeral of 
the murdered sailor was turned into a public dem- 
onstration. Yet nothing came of this incident, be- 
yond a proclamation by the President closing the 
ports of the United States to the offending frigates 
and ordering the arrest of the captain of the Lean- 
der wherever found. After all, the death of a com- 
mon seaman did not fire the hearts of farmers 
peacefully tilling their fields far beyond hearing of 
the Leander' s guns. 

A year full of troublesome happenings passed; 

' Fragments of Voyages and Travels, quoted by Henry Adams, in 
History of the United States, vol. iii, p. 9^. 



138 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

scores of American vessels were condemned in 
British admiralty courts, and American seamen 
were impressed with increasing frequency, until in 
the early summer of 1807 these manifold grievances 
culminated in an outrage that shook even Jeffer- 
son out of his composure and evoked a passionate 
outcry for war from all parts of the country. 

While a number of British war vessels were lying 
in Hampton Roads watching for certain French 
frigates which had taken refuge up Chesapeake 
Bay, they lost a number of seamen by desertion un- 
der peculiarly annoying circumstances. In one in- 
stance a whole boat's crew made off under cover of 
night to Norfolk and there publicly defied their 
commander. Three deserters from the British frig- 
ate Melampus had enlisted on the American frig- 
ate Chesapeake, which had just been fitted out for 
service in the Mediterranean; but on inquiry these 
thi'ee were proven to be native Americans who had 
been impressed into British service. Unfortunate- 
ly inquiry did disclose one British deserter who 
had enlisted on the Chesapeake, a loud-mouthed tar 
by the name of Jenkin Ratford. These irritating 
facts stirred Admiral Berkeley at Halifax to high- 
handed measures. Without waiting for instruc- 
tions, he issued an order to all commanders in the 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 139 

North Atlantic Squadron to search the Chesapeake 
for deserters, if she should be encountered on the 
high seas. This order of the 1st of June should be 
shown to the captain of the Chesapeake as suflScient 
authority for searching her. 

On June 22, 1807, the Chesapeake passed unsus- 
pecting between the capes on her way to the Medi- 
terranean. She was a stanch frigate carrying for- 
ty guns and a crew of 375 men and boys; but she 
was at this time in a distressing state of unreadi- 
ness, owing to the dilatoriness and incompetence of 
the naval authorities at Washington. The gun- 
deck was littered with lumber and odds and ends of 
rigging; the guns, though loaded, were not all fitted 
to their carriages; and the crew was untrained. As 
the guns had to be fired by slow matches or by 
loggerheads heated red-hot, and the ammunition 
was stored in the magazine, the frigate was totally 
unprepared for action. Commodore Barron, who 
commanded the Chesapeake, counted on putting 
her into fighting trim on the long voyage across 
the Atlantic. 

Just ahead of the Chesapeake as she passed out 
to sea was the Leopard, a British frigate of fifty- 
two guns, which was apparently on the lookout for 
suspicious merchantmen. It was not until both 



140 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

vessels were eight miles or more southeast of Cape 
Henry that the movements of the Leopard began to 
attract attention. At about half-past three in the 
afternoon she came within hailing distance and 
hove to, announcing that she had dispatches for 
the commander. The Chesapeake also hove to and 
answered the hail, a risky move considering that 
she was unprepared for action and that the Leopard 
lay to the windward. But why should the com- 
mander of the American frigate have entertained 
suspicions.'' 

A boat put out from the Leopard, bearing a petty 
officer, who delivered a note enclosing Admiral 
Berkeley's order and expressing the hope that 
"every circumstance . . . may be adjusted in a 
manner that the harmony subsisting between the 
two countries may remain undisturbed." Commo- 
dore Barron replied that he knew of no British de- 
serters on his vessel and declined in courteous terms 
to permit his crew to be mustered by any other 
officers but their own. The messenger departed, 
and then, for the first time entertaining serious 
misgivings. Commodore Barron ordered his decks 
cleared for action. But before the crew could be- 
stir themselves, the Leopard drew near, her men 
at quarters. The British commander shouted a 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 141 

warning, but Barron, now thoroughly alarmed, re- 
plied, "I don't hear what you say." The warning 
was repeated, but again Barron to gain time shouted 
that he could not hear. The Leopard then fired two 
shots across the bow of the Chesapeake, and almost 
immediately without parleying further — she was 
now within two hundred feet of her victim — 
poured a broadside into the American vessel. 

Confusion reigned on the Chesapeake. The crew 
for the most part showed courage, but they were 
helpless, for they could not fire a gun for want of 
slow matches or loggerheads. They crowded about 
the magazine clamoring in vain for a chance to de- 
fend the vessel ; they yelled with rage at their pre- 
dicament. Only one gun was discharged and that 
was by means of a live coal brought up from the 
galley after the Chesapeake had received a third 
broadside and Commodore Barron had ordered the 
flag to be hauled down to spare further slaughter. 
Three of his crew had already been killed and 
eighteen wounded, himself among the number. 
The whole action lasted only fifteen minutes. 

Boarding crews now approached and several Brit- 
ish officers climbed to the deck of the Chesapeake 
and mustered her crew. Among the ship's com- 
pany they found the alleged deserters and, hiding 



142 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

in the coal-hole, the notorious Jenkin Ratford. 
These four men they took with them, and the Leop- 
ard, having fulfilled her instructions, now suffered 
the Chesapeake to limp back to Hampton Roads. 
"For the first time in their history," writes Henry 
Adams,' "the people of the United States learned, in 
June, 1807, the feeling of a true national emotion. 
Hitherto every public passion had been more or 
less partial and one-sided; . . . but the out- 
rage committed on the Chesapeake stung through 
hidebound prejudices, and made democrat and 
aristocrat writhe alike." 

Had President Jefferson chosen to go to war at 
this moment, he would have had a united people be- 
hind him, and he was well aware that he possessed 
the power of choice. "The affair of the Chesapeake 
put war into my hand," he wrote some years later. 
"I had only to open it and let havoc loose." But 
Thomas Jefferson was not a martial character. 
The State Governors, to be sure, were requested to 
have their militia in readiness, and the Governor of 
Virginia was desired to call such companies into 
service as were needed for the defense of Norfolk. 
The President referred in indignant terms to the 
abuse of the laws of hospitality and the "outrage" 

' History of the United States, vol. iv, p. 27. 



AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY 143 

committed by the British commander; but his 
proclamation only ordered all British armed ves- 
sels out of American waters and forbade all inter- 
course with them if they remained. The tone of 
the proclamation was so moderate as to seem pusil- 
lanimous. John Randolph called it an apology. 
Thomas Jefferson did not mean to have war. With 
that extraordinary confidence in his own powers, 
which in smaller men would be called smug conceit, 
he believed that he could secure disavowal and hon- 
orable reparation for the wrong committed; but he 
chose a frail intermediary when he committed this 
delicate mission to James Monroe. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 

It is one of the strange paradoxes of our time that 
the author of the Declaration of Independence, to 
whose principle of self-determination the world 
seems again to be turning, should now be regarded 
as a self-confessed pacifist, with all the derogatory 
implications that lurk in that epithet. The circum- 
stances which made him a revolutionist in 1776 and 
a passionate advocate of peace in 1807 deserve 
some consideration. The charge made by contem- 
poraries of Jefferson that his aversion to war sprang 
from personal cowardice may be dismissed at once, 
as it was by him, with contempt. Nor was his 
hatred of war merely an instinctive abhorrence of 
bloodshed. He had not hesitated to wage naval 
war on the Barbary Corsairs. It is true that he was 
temperamentally averse to the use of force under 
ordinary circumstances. He did not belong to that 
type of full-blooded men who find self-expression in 

U4> 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 145 

adventurous activity. Mere physical effort with- 
out conscious purpose never appealed to him. He 
was at the opposite pole of life from a man like 
Aaron Burr. He never, so far as history records, 
had an affair of honor; he never fought a duel; he 
never performed active military service; he never 
took human life. Yet he was not a non-resist- 
ant. "My hope of preserving peace for our coun- 
try," he wrote on one occasion, "is not founded 
in the Quaker principle of non-resistance under 
every wrong." 

The true sources of Jefferson's pacifism must be 
sought in his rationalistic philosophy, which ac- 
corded the widest scope to the principle of self-di- 
rection and self-determination, whether on the part 
of the individual or of groups of individuals. To 
impose one's will upon another was to enslave, ac- 
cording to his notion; to coerce by war was to en- 
slave a community; and to enslave a community 
was to provoke revolution. Jefferson's thought 
gravitated inevitably to the center of his rational 
universe — to the principle of enlightened self-in- 
terest. Men and women are not to be permanently 
moved by force but by appeals to their interests. 
He completed his thought as follows in the letter 
already quoted: "But [my hope of preserving 



146 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

peace is founded] in the belief that a just and 
friendly conduct on our part will procure justice 
and friendship from others. In the existing con- 
test, each of the combatants will find an interest in 
our friendship." 

It was a chaotic world in which this philosopher- 
statesman was called upon to act — a Wv/fld in which 
international law and neutral rights had been well- 
nigh submerged in twelve years of almost continu- 
ous war. Yet with amazing self-assurance Presi- 
dent Jefferson believed that he held in his hand a 
master-key which would unlock all doors that had 
been shut to the commerce of neutrals. He called 
this master-key "peaceable coercion," and he 
explained its magic potency in this wise: 

Our commerce is so valuable to them [the European 
belligerents] that they will be glad to purchase it when 
the only price we ask is to do us justice. I believe that 
we have in our hands the means of peaceable coercion; 
and that the moment they see our government so unit- 
ed as that they can make use of it, they will for their 
own interest be disposed to do us justice. 

The idea of using commercial restrictions as a 
weapon to secure recognition of rights was of course 
not original with Jefferson, but it was now to be 
given a trial without parallel in the history of the 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 147 

nation. Non-importation agreements had proved 
efficacious in the struggle of the colonies with the 
mother country; it seemed not unreasonable to 
suppose that a well-sustained refusal to traffic in 
English goods would meet the emergency of 1807, 
when the ruling of British admiralty courts threat- 
ened to cut off the lucrative commerce between Eu- 
rope and the West Indies. With this theory in view, 
the President and his Secretary of State advocated 
the Non-Importation Bill of April 18, 1806, which 
forbade the entry of certain specified goods of Brit- 
ish manufacture. The opposition found a leader 
in Randolph, who now broke once and for all with 
the Administration. "Never in the course of my 
life," he exclaimed, "have I witnessed such a scene 
of indignity and inefficiency as this measure holds 
forth to the world. What is it? A milk-and-water 
bill! A dose of chicken-broth to be taken nine 
months hence ! . . . It is too contemptible to be 
the object of consideration, or to excite the feelings 
of the pettiest state in Europe." The Administra- 
tion carried the bill through Congress, but Ran- 
dolph had the satisfaction of seeing his characteri- 
zation of the measure amply justified by the course 
of events. 

With the Non-Importation Act as a weapon, the 



148 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

President was confident that Monroe, who had 
once more returned to his post in London, could 
force a settlement of all outstanding differences 
with Great Britain. To his annoyance, and to 
Monroe's chagrin, however, he was obliged to send 
a special envoy to act with Monroe. Factious op- 
position in the Senate forced the President to pla- 
cate the Federahsts by appointing William Pinkney 
of Maryland. The American commissioners were 
instructed to insist upon three concessions in the 
treaty which they were to negotiate: restoration of 
trade with enemies' colonies, indemnity for cap- 
tures made since the Essex decision, and express 
repudiation of the right of impressment. In return 
for these concessions, they might hold out the pos- 
sible repeal of the Non-Importation Act! Only 
confirmed optimists could believe that the mistress 
of the seas, flushed with the victory of Trafalgar, 
would consent to yield these points for so slight a 
compensation. The mission was, indeed, doomed 
from the outset, and nothing more need be said of 
it than that in the end, to secure any treaty at 
all, Monroe and Pinkney broke their instructions 
and set aside the three ultimata. What they ob- 
tained in return seemed so insignificant and doubt- 
ful, and what they paid for even these slender 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 149 

compensations seemed so exorbitant, that the Pres- 
ident would not even submit the treaty to the Sen- 
ate. The first appHcation of the theory of peaceable 
coercion thus ended in humiliating failure. Jeffer- 
son thought it best "to let the negotiation take a 
friendly nap"; but Madison, who felt that his po- 
litical future depended on a diplomatic triumph 
over England, drafted new instructions for the two 
commissioners, hoping that the treaty might yet be 
put into acceptable form. It was while these new 
instructions were crossing the ocean that the 
Chesapeake struck her colors. 

James Monroe is one of the most unlucky diplo- 
mats in American history. From those early days 
when he had received the fraternal embraces of the 
Jacobins in Paris and had been recalled by Presi- 
dent Washington, to the ill-fated Spanish mission, 
circumstances seem to have conspired against him. 
The honor of negotiating the purchase of Louisiana 
should have been his alone, but he arrived just a 
day too late and was obliged to divide the glory 
with Livingston. On this mission to England he 
was not permitted to conduct negotiations alone 
but was associated with William Pinkney, a Feder- 
alist. No wonder he suspected Madison, or at least 



150 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Madison's friends, of wishing to discredit him. 
And now another impossible task was laid upon 
him. He was instructed to demand not only dis- 
avowal and reparation for the attack on the Chesa- 
peake and the restoration of the American seamen, 
but also as "an indispensable part of the satisfac- 
tion" "an entire abolition of impressments." K 
the Secretary of State had deliberately contrived to 
deliver Monroe into the hands of George Canning, 
he could not have been more successful, for Mon- 
roe had already protested against the Chesapeake 
outrage as an act of aggression which should be 
promptly disavowed without reference to the larg- 
er question of impressment. He was now obliged 
to eat his own words and inject into the discussion, 
as Canning put it, the irrelevant matters which 
they had agreed to separate from the present con- 
troversy. Canning was quick to see his opportu- 
nity. Mr. Monroe must be aware, said he, that on 
several recent occasions His Majesty had firmly 
declined to waive "the ancient and prescriptive 
usages of Great Britain, founded on the soundest 
principles of natural law," simply because they 
might come in contact with the interests or the 
feelings of the American people. If Mr. Mon- 
roe's instructions left him powerless to adjust this 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 151 

regrettable incident of the Leopard and the Chesa- 
peake, without raising the other question of the 
right of search and impressment, then His Majesty 
could only send a special envoy to the United 
States to terminate the controversy in a manner 
satisfactory to both countries. "But," added 
Canning with sarcasm which was not lost on Mon- 
roe, "in order to avoid the inconvenience which has 
arisen from the mixed nature of your instructions, 
that minister will not be empowered to entertain 
. . . any proposition respecting the search of 
merchant vessels." 

One more humiliating experience was reserved 
for Monroe before his diplomatic career closed. 
Following Madison's new set of instructions, he and 
Pinkney attempted to reopen negotiations for the 
revision of the discredited treaty of the preceding 
year. But Canning had reasons of his own for 
wishing to be rid of a treaty which had been drawn 
by the late Whig Mmistry. He informed the 
American commissioners arrogantly that "the pro- 
posal of the President of the United States for pro- 
ceeding to negotiate anew upon the basis of a treaty 
already solemnly concluded and signed, is a propos- 
al wholly inadmissible." His Majesty could there- 
fore only acquiesce in the refusal of the President 



152 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

to ratify the treaty. One week later, James Mon- 
roe departed from London, never again to set foot 
on British soil, leaving Pinkney to assume the du- 
ties of Minister at the Court of St. James. For 
the second time Monroe returned to his own coun- 
try discredited by the President who had appointed 
him. In both instances he felt himself the victim 
of injustice. In spite of his friendship for Jefferson, 
he was embittered against the Administration and 
in this mood lent himself all too readily to the 
schemes of John Randolph, who had already 
picked him as the one candidate who could beat 
Madison in the next presidential election. 

From the point of view of George Canning and 
the Tory squirearchy whose mouthpiece he was, 
the Chesapeake affair was but an incident — an un- 
happy incident, to be sure, but still only an inci- 
dent — in the world-wide struggle with Napoleon. 
What was at stake was nothing less than the com- 
mercial supremacy of Great Britain. The astound- 
ing growth of Napoleon's empire was a standing 
menace to British trade. The overthrow of Prussia 
in the fall of 1806 left the Corsican in control of 
Central Europe and in a position to deal his long 
premeditated blow. A fortnight after the battle of 
Jena, he entered Berlin and there issued the famous 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 153 

decree which was his answer to the British blockade 
of the French channel ports. Since England does 
not recognize the system of international law uni- 
versally observed by all civilized nations — so the 
preamble read — but by a monstrous abuse of the 
right of blockade has determined to destroy neutral 
trade and to raise her commerce and industry upon 
the ruins of that of the continent, and since "who- 
ever deals on the continent in English goods there- 
by favors and renders himself an accomplice of 
her designs," therefore the British Isles are declared 
to be in a state of blockade. Henceforth all English 
goods were to be lawful prize in any territory held 
by the troops of France or her allies ; and all vessels 
which had come from English ports or from Eng- 
lish colonies were to be confiscated, together with 
their cargoes. This challenge was too much for the 
moral equilibrium of the squires, the shipowners, 
and the merchants who dominated Parliament. It 
dulled their sense of justice and made them impa- 
tient under the pin-pricks which came from the 
United States. "A fcv/ short months of war," de- 
clared the Morning Post truculently, "would con- 
vince these desperate [American] politicians of the 
folly of measuring the strength of a rising, but still 
infant and puny, nation with the colossal power of 



154 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the British Empire." "Right," said the Times, an- 
other organ of the Tory Government, "is power 
sanctioned by usage." Concession to Americans 
at this crisis was not to be entertained for a mo- 
ment, for after all, said the Times, they "possess 
all the vices of their Indian neighbors without 
their virtues." 

In this temper the British Government was pre- 
pared to ignore the United States and deal Na- 
poleon blow for blow. An order-in-council of Janu- 
ary 7, 1807, asserted the right of retaliation and 
declared that "no vessel shall be permitted to trade 
from one port to another, both which ports shall 
belong to, or be in possession of France or her 
allies." The peculiar hardship of this order for 
American shipowners is revealed by the papers of 
Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose shrewdness 
and enterprise were making him one of the mer- 
chant princes of his time. One of his ships, the 
Liberty, of some 250 tons, was sent to Lisbon with 
a cargo of 2052 barrels and 220 half -barrels of flour 
which cost the owner $10.68 a barrel. Her cap- 
tain, on entering port, learned that flour com- 
manded a better price at Cadiz. To Cadiz, 
accordingly, he set sail and sold his cargo for $22.50 
a barrel, winning for the owner a goodly profit 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 155 

of $25,000, less commission. It was such trading 
ventures as this that the British order-in-council 
doomed. 

What American shipmasters had now to fear 
from both belhgerents was made startlingly clear 
by the fate of the ship Horizon, which had sailed 
from Charleston, South Carolina, with a cargo for 
Zanzibar. On the way she touched at various 
South American ports and disposed of most of her 
cargo. Then changing her destination, and taking 
on a cargo for the English market, she set sail for 
London. On the way she was forced to put in at 
Lisbon to refit. As she left to resume her voyage 
she was seized by an English frigate and brought in 
as a fair prize, since — according to the Rule of 
1756 — she had been apprehended in an illegal 
traffic between an enemy country and its colony. 
The British prize court condemned the cargo 
but released the ship. The unlucky Horizon then 
loaded with an English cargo and sailed again to 
Lisbon, but misfortune overtook her and she was 
wrecked off the French coast. Her cargo was sal- 
vaged, however, and what was not of English ori- 
gin was restored to her owners by decree of a 
French prize court; the rest of her cargo was con- 
fiscated under the terms of the Berlin decree. 



156 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

When the American Minister protested at this de- 
cision, he was told that "since America suffers her 
ships to be searched, she adopts the principle that 
the flag does not cover the goods. Since she recog- 
nizes the absurd blockades laid by England, con- 
sents to having her vessels incessantly stopped, sent 
to England, and so turned aside from their course, 
why should the Americans not suffer the blockade 
laid by France? Certainly France recognizes that 
these measures are unjust, illegal, and subversive 
of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of na- 
tions to resort to force, and to declare themselves 
against things which dishonor them and disgrace 
their independence."' But an invitation to enter 
the European maelstrom and battle for neutral 
rights made no impression upon the mild-tempered 
President. 

It is as clear as day that the British Government 
was now determined, under pretense of retaliat- 
ing upon France, to promote British trade with 
the continent by every means and at the expense 
of neutrals. Another order-in-council, November 
11, 1807, closed to neutrals all European ports 
under French control, "as if the same were actu- 
ally blockaded," but permitted vessels which first 

'Henry Adams, History of the United States, iv, p. 110. 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 157 

entered a British port and obtained a British license 
to sail to any continental port. It was an order 
which, as Henry Adams has said, could have but 
one purpose — to make American commerce Eng- 
lish. This was precisely the contemporary opin- 
ion of the historian's grandfather, who declared that 
"the orders-in-council, if submitted to, would have 
degraded us to the condition of colonists." 

Only one more blow was needed, it would seem, 
to complete the ruin of American commerce. It fell 
a month later, when Napoleon, having overrun the 
Spanish peninsula and occupied Portugal, issued 
his Milan decree of December 17, 1807. Hence- 
forth any vessel which submitted to search by 
English cruisers, or paid any tonnage duty or tax to 
the English Government, or sailed to or from any 
English port, would be captured and condemned as 
lawful prize. Such was to be the maritime code of 
France "until England should return to the prin- 
ciples of international law which are also those of 
justice and honor." 

Never was a commercial nation less prepared to 
defend itself against depredations than the United 
States of America in this year 1807. For this unpre- 
paredness many must bear the blame, but Presi- 
dent Jefferson has become the scapegoat. This 



158 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Virginia farmer and landsman was not only igno- 
rant and distrustful of all the implements of war, 
but utterly unfamiliar with the ways of the sea and 
with the first principles of sea-power. The Tri- 
politan War seems to have inspired him with a single 
fixed idea — that for defensive purposes gunboats 
were superior to frigates and less costly. He set 
forth this idea in a special message to Congress 
(February 10, 1807), claiming to have the support 
of "professional men," among whom he mentioned 
Generals Wilkinson and Gates! He proposed the 
construction of two hundred of these gunboats, 
which would be distributed among the various ex- 
posed harbors, where in time of peace they would 
be hauled up on shore under sheds, for protection 
against sun and storm. As emergency arose these 
floating batteries were to be manned by the seamen 
and militia of the port. What appealed particular- 
ly to the President in this programme was the im- 
munity it offered from "an excitement to engage in 
oflFensive maritime war." Gallatin would have mod- 
ified even this plan for economy's sake. He would 
have constructed only one-half of the proposed fleet 
since the large seaports could probably build thirty 
gunboats in as many days, if an emergency arose. 
In extenuation of Gallatin's shortsightedness, it 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 159 

should be remembered that he was a native of 
Switzerland, whose navy has never ploughed many 
seas. It is less easy to excuse the rest of the Presi- 
dent's advisers and the Congress which was be- 
guiled into accepting this naive project. Nor did 
the Chesapeake outrage teach either Congress or 
the Administration a salutary lesson. On the con- 
trary, when in October the news of the bombard- 
ment of Copenhagen had shattered the nerves of 
statesmen in all neutral countries, and while the 
differences with England were still unsettled, Jef- 
ferson and his colleagues decided to hold four of the 
best frigates in port and use them "as receptacles 
for enlisting seamen to fill the gunboats occasion- 
ally." Whom the gods would punish they first 
make mad ! 

The 17th of December was a memorable day in 
the annals of this Administration. Favorable 
tradewinds had brought into American ports a 
number of packets with news from Europe. The 
Revenge had arrived in New York with Armstrong's 
dispatches announcing Napoleon's purpose to en- 
force the Berlin decree; the Edward had reached 
Boston with British newspapers forecasting the or- 
der-in-council of the 1 1th of November. This news 
burst like a bomb in Washington where the genial 



160 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

President was observing with scientific detachment 
the operation of his poHcy of commercial coercion. 
The Non-Importation Act had just gone into effect. 
Jefferson immediately called his Cabinet together. 
All were of one mind. The impending order-in- 
council, it was agreed, left but one alternative. 
Commerce must be totally suspended until the full 
scope of these new aggressions could be ascertained. 
The President took a loose sheet of paper and 
drafted hastily a message to Congress, recommend- 
ing an embargo in anticipation of the offensive 
British order. But the prudent Madison urged 
that it was better not to refer explicitly to the order 
and proposed a substitute which simply recom- 
mended "an immediate inhibition of the departure 
of our vessels from the ports of the United States," 
on the ground that shipping was likely to be ex- 
posed to greater dangers. Only Gallatin demurred : 
he would have preferred an embargo for a hmited 
time. " I prefer war to a permanent embargo," he 
wrote next day. "Government prohibitions," he 
added significantly, "do always more mischief than 
had been calculated." But Gallatin was overruled 
and the message, in Madison's form, was sent to 
Congress on the following day. The Senate im- 
mediately passed the desired bill through three 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 161 

readings in a single day; the House confirmed 
this action after only two days of debate; and 
on the 22d of December, the President signed the 
Embargo Act. 

What was this measure which was passed by 
Congress almost without discussion? Ostensibly it 
was an act for the protection of American ships, 
merchandise, and seamen. It forbade the depar- 
ture of all ships for foreign ports, except vessels un- 
der the immediate direction of the President and 
vessels in ballast or already loaded with goods. 
Foreign armed vessels were exempted also as a mat- 
ter of course. Coasting ships were to give bonds 
double the value of vessel and cargo to reland their 
freight in some port of the United States. Histo- 
rians have discovered a degree of duplicity in the 
alleged motives for this act. How, it is asked, could 
protection of ships and seamen be the motive when 
all of Jefferson's private letters disclose his deter- 
mination to put his theory of peaceable coercion to 
a practical test by this measure? The criticism is 
not altogether fair, for, as Jefferson would himself 
have replied, peaceable coercion was designed to 
force the withdrawal of orders-in-council and de- 
crees that menaced the safety of ships and cargoes. 
The policy might entail some incidental hardships, 



162 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

to be sure, but the end in view was protection 
of American lives and property. Madison was 
not quite candid, nevertheless, when he assured 
the British Minister that the embargo was a pre- 
cautionary measure only and not conceived with 
hostile intent. 

Chimerical this policy seemed to many contem- 
poraries; chimerical it has seemed to historians, and 
to us who have passed through the World War. 
Yet in the World War it was the possession of food 
stuffs and raw materials by the United States 
which gave her a dominating position in the coun- 
cils of the Allies. Had her commerce in 1807 been 
as necessary to England and France as it was "at 
the very peak" of the World War, Thomas Jeffer- 
son might have proved that peaceable coercion is 
an effective alternative to war; but he overesti- 
mated the magnitude and importance of the carry- 
ing trade of the United States, and erred still more 
grievously in assuming that a public conscience ex- 
isted which would prove superior to the temptation 
to evade the law. Jefferson dreaded war quite as 
much because of its concomitants as because of its 
inevitable brutality, quite as much because it tend- 
ed to exalt government and to produce corruption 
as because it maimed bodies and sacrificed human 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 163 

lives. Yet he never took fully into account the 
possible accompaniments of his alternative to war. 
That the embargo would debauch public morals and 
make government arbitrary, he was to learn only by 
bitter experience and personal humiliation. 

Just after the passage of this momentous act, 
Canning's special envoy, George Rose, arrived in 
the United States. A British diplomat of the better 
sort, with much dignity of manner and suave cour- 
tesy, he was received with more than ordinary con- 
sideration by the Administration. He was com- 
missioned, every one supposed, to offer reparation 
for the Chesapeake affair. Even after he had noti- 
fied Madison that his instructions bade him insist, 
as an indispensable preliminary, on the recall of 
the President's Chesapeake proclamation, he was 
treated with deference and assured that the Presi- 
dent was prepared to comply, if he could do so with- 
out incurring the charge of inconsistency and disre- 
gard of national honor. Madison proposed to put a 
proclamation of recall in Rose's hands, duly signed 
by the President and dated so as to correspond 
with the day on which all differences should be ad- 
justed. Rose consented to this course and the 
proclamation was delivered into his hands. He 
then divulged little by little his further instructions, 



164 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

which were such as no self-respecting administra- 
tion could listen to with composure. Canning de- 
manded a formal disavowal of Commodore Bar- 
ron's conduct in encouraging deserters from His 
Majesty's service and harboring them on board his 
ship. "You will state," read Rose's instructions, 
"that such disavowals, solemnly expressed, would 
afford to His Majesty a satisfactory pledge on the 
part of the American Government that the recur- 
rence of similar causes will not on any occasion im- 
pose on His Majesty the necessity of authorizing 
those means of force to which Admiral Berkeley 
has resorted without authority, but which the con- 
tinued repetition of such provocations as unfortu- 
nately led to the attack upon the Chesapeake might 
render necessary, as a just reprisal on the part of 
His Majesty." No doubt Rose did his best to soft- 
en the tone of these instructions, but he could not 
fail to make them clear; and Madison, who had 
conducted these informal interviews, slowly awoke 
to the real nature of what he was asked to do. He 
closed further negotiations with the comment that 
the United States could not be expected "to make, 
as it were, an expiatory sacrifice to obtain redress, 
or beg for reparation." The Administration deter- 
mined to let the disavowal of Berkeley suffice for 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 165 

the present and to allow the matter of reparation to 
await further developments. The coercive policy 
on which the Administration had now launched 
would, it was confidently believed, bring His 
Majesty's Government to terms. 

The very suggestion of an embargo had an unex- 
pected effect upon American shipmasters. To avoid 
being shut up in port fleets of ships put out to sea, 
half-manned, half -laden, and often without clear- 
ance papers. With freight rates soaring to un- 
heard-of altitudes, ship-owners were willing to as- 
sume all the risks of the sea — British frigates in- 
cluded. So little did they appreciate the protec- 
tion offered by a benevolent government that they 
assumed an attitude of hostility to authority and 
evaded the exactions of the law in every conceiv- 
able way. Under guise of engaging in the coasting 
trade, many a ship landed her cargo in a foreign 
port; a brisk traffic also sprang up across the Cana- 
dian border; and Amelia Island in St. Mary's Riv- 
er, Florida, became a notorious mart for illicit com- 
merce. Almost at once Congress was forced to pass 
supplementary acts, conferring upon collectors of 
ports powers of inspection and regulation which 
Gallatin unhesitatingly pronounced both odious 
and dangerous. The President affixed his signature 



166 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

ruefully to acts which increased the army, multi- 
plied the number of gunboats under construction, 
and appropriated a million and a quarter dollars to 
the construction of coast defenses and the equip- 
ment of militia. " This embargo act," he confessed, 
"is certainly the most embarrassing we ever had to 
execute. I did not expect a crop of so sudden and 
rank growth of fraud and open opposition by force 
could have grown up in the United States." 

The worst feature of the experiment was its in- 
effectiveness. The inhibition of commerce had so 
slight an effect upon England that when Pinkney 
approached Canning with the proposal of a quid 
pro quo — the United States to rescind the embar- 
go, England to revoke her orders-in-council — he 
was told with biting sarcasm that "if it were pos- 
sible to make any sacrifice for the repeal of the em- 
bargo without appearing to deprecate it as a meas- 
ure of hostility, he would gladly have facilitated its 
removal as a measure of inconvenient restriction up- 
on the American people" By licensing American 
vessels, indeed, which had either slipped out of 
port before the embargo or evaded the collectors, 
the British Government was even profiting by this 
measure of restriction . It was these vagrant vessels 
which gave Napoleon his excuse for the Bayonne 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 167 

decree of April 17, 1808, when with a stroke of the 
pen he ordered the seizure of all American ships 
in French ports and swept property to the value 
of ten million dollars into the imperial exchequer. 
Since these vessels were abroad in violation of the 
embargo, he argued, they could not be American 
craft but must be British ships in disguise. Gen- 
eral Armstrong, writing from Paris, warned the 
Secretary of State not to expect that the embargo 
would do more than keep the United States at 
peace with the belligerents. As a coercive meas- 
ure, its effect was nil. "Here it is not felt, and in 
England ... it is forgotten." 

Before the end of the year the failure of the em- 
bargo was patent to every fair-minded observer. 
Men might differ ever so much as to the harm 
wrought by the embargo abroad; but all agreed that 
it was not bringing either France or England to 
terms, and that it was working real hardship at home. 
Federalists in New England, where nearly one- 
third of the ships in the carrying trade were owned, 
pointed to the schooners "rotting at their wharves," 
to the empty shipyards and warehouses, to the idle 
sailors wandering in the streets of port towns, and 
asked passionately how long they must be sacri- 
ficed to the theories of this charlatan in the White 



168 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

House. Even Southern Republicans were asking 
uneasily when the President would realize that the 
embargo was ruining planters who could not mar- 
ket their cotton and tobacco. And Republicans 
whose pockets were not touched were soberly ques- 
tioning whether a policy that reduced the annual 
value of exports from $108,000,000 to $22,000,000, 
and cut the national revenue in half, had not been 
tested long enough. 

Indications multiplied that "the dictatorship of 
Mr. Jefferson'* was drawing to a close. In 1808, 
after the election of Madison as his successor, he 
practically abdicated as leader of his party, partly 
out of an honest conviction that he ought not to 
commit the President-elect by any positive course 
of action, and partly no doubt out of a less praise- 
worthy desire not to admit the defeat of his cher- 
ished principle. His abdication left the party with- 
out resolute leadership at a critical moment. Mad- 
ison and Gallatin tried to persuade their party 
associates to continue the embargo until June, and 
then, if concessions were not forthcoming, to declare 
war; but they were powerless to hold the Republi- 
can majority together on this programme. Setting 
aside the embargo and returning to the earlier policy 
of non-intercourse, Congress adopted a measure 



THE PACIFISTS OF 1807 169 

which excluded all English and French vessels 
and imports, but which authorized the President 
to renew trade with either country if it should 
mend its ways. On March 1, 1809, with much 
bitterness of spirit, Thomas Jefferson signed the 
bill which ended his great experiment. Martha 
Jefferson once said of her father that he never gave 
up a friend or an opinion. A few months before his 
death, he alluded to the embargo, with the pathetic 
insistence of old age, as "a measure, which, perse- 
vered in a little longer . . . would have effected 
its object completely." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE LAST PHASE OF PEACEABLE COERCION 

Three days after JefiFerson gave his consent to the 
repeal of the embargo, the Presidency passed in 
succession to the second of the Virginia Dynasty. 
It was not an impressive figure that stood beside 
Jefferson and faced the great crowd gathered in the 
new Hall of Representatives at the Capitol. James 
Madison was a pale, extremely nervous, and obvi- 
ously unhappy person on this occasion. For a mas- 
terful character this would have been the day of 
days; for Madison it was a fearful ordeal which 
sapped every ounce of energy. He trembled vio- 
lently as he began to speak and his voice was almost 
inaudible. Those who could not hear him but who 
afterward read the Inaugural Address doubtless 
comforted themselves with the reflection that they 
had not missed much. The new President, indeed, 
had nothing new to say — no new policy to advo- 
cate. He could only repeat the old platitudes 

170 



PEACEABLE COERCION 171 

about preferring "amicable discussion and reason- 
able accommodation of differences to a decision of 
them by an appeal to arms." Evidently, no strong 
assertion of national rights was to be expected from 
this plain, homespun President. 

At the Inaugural Ball, however, people forgot 
their President in admiration of the President's 
wife, Dolly Madison. "She looked a queen," 
wrote Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith. " She had on 
a pale buff-colored velvet, made plain, with a very 
long train, but not the least trimming, and beauti- 
ful pearl necklace, earings, and bracelets. Her 
head dress was a turban of the same colored velvet 
and white satin (from Paris) with two superb 
plumes, the bird of paradise feathers. It would be 
absolutely impossible for any one to behave with 
more perfect propriety than she did. Unassuming 
dignity, sweetness, grace. Mr. Madison, on the con- 
trary," continued this same warm-hearted observer, 
"seemed spiritless and exhausted. While he was 
standing by me, I said, 'I wish with all my heart I 
had a little bit of seat to offer you.' ' I wish so too,' 
said he, with a most woe-begone face, and looking as 
if he could hardly stand. The managers came up to 
ask him to stay to supper, he assented, and turning 
to me, ' but I would much rather be in bed,' he said." 



172 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Quite different was Mr. Jefferson on this occa- 
sion. He seemed to be in high spirits and "his 
countenance beamed with a benevolent joy." It 
seemed to this ardent admirer that "every demon- 
stration of respect to Mr. M. gave Mr. J. more 
pleasure than if paid to himself." No wonder that 
Mr. Jefferson was in good spirits. Was he not now 
free from all the anxieties and worries of politics? 
Already he was counting on retiring "to the 
elysium of domestic affections and the irresponsi- 
ble direction" of his own affairs. A week later he 
set out for Monticello on horseback, never again 
to set foot in the city which had witnessed his 
triumph and his humiliation. 

The election of Madison had disclosed wide rifts 
in his party, Monroe had lent himself to the de- 
signs of John Randolph and had entered the list of 
candidates for the Presidency; and Vice-President 
Clinton had also been put forward by other mal- 
contents. It was this division in the ranks of the 
opposition which in the end had insured Madison's 
election ; but factional differences pursued Madison 
into the White House. Even in the choice of his 
official family he was forced to consider the prefer- 
ences of politicians whom he despised, for when he 
would have appointed Gallatin Secretary of State, 



PEACEABLE COERCION 173 

he found Giles of Virginia and Samuel Smith of 
Maryland bent upon defeating the nomination. 
The Smith faction was, indeed, too influential to be 
ignored ; with a wry face Madison stooped to a bar- 
gain which left Gallatin at the head of the Treasury 
but which saddled his Administration with Rob- 
ert Smith, who proved to be quite unequal to the 
exacting duties of the Department of State. 

The Administration began with what appeared 
to be a great diplomatic triumph. In April the 
President issued a proclamation announcing that 
the British orders-in-council would be withdrawn 
on the 10th of June, after which date commerce 
with Great Britain might be renewed. In the 
newspapers appeared, with this welcome procla- 
mation, a note drafted by the British Minister 
Erskine expressing the confident hope that all dif- 
ferences between the two countries would be ad- 
justed by a special envoy whom His Majesty had 
determined to send to the United States. The Re- 
publican press was jubilant. At last the sage of 
Monticello was vindicated. "It may be boldly al- 
leged," said the National Intelligencer, "that the 
revocation of the British orders is attributable to 
the embargo." 

Forgotten now were all the grievances against 



174 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Great Britain. Every shipping port awoke to new 
life. Merchants hastened to consign the merchan- 
dise long stored in their warehouses; shipmasters 
sent out runners for crews; and ships were soon 
winging their way out into the open sea. For three 
months American vessels crossed the ocean unmo- 
lested, and then came the bitter, the incomprehen- 
sible news that Erskine's arrangement had been 
repudiated and the over-zealous diplomat recalled. 
The one brief moment of triumph in Madison's 
administration had passed. 

Slowly and painfully the public learned the truth. 
Erskine had exceeded his instructions. Canning 
had not been averse to concessions, it is true, but 
he had named as an indispensable condition of 
any concession that the United States should 
bind itself to exclude French ships of war from 
its ports. Instead of holding to the letter of his 
instructions, Erskine had allowed himself to be 
governed by the spirit of concession and had ig- 
nored the essential prerequisite. Nothing remained 
but to renew the Non-Intercourse Act against 
Great Britain. This the President did by procla- 
mation on August 9, 1809, and the country settled 
back sullenly into commercial inactivity. 

Another scarcely less futile chapter in diplomacy 



PEACEABLE COERCION 175 

began with the arrival of Francis James Jackson as 
British Minister in September. Those who knew 
this Briton were justified in concluding that con- 
ciliation had no important place in the programme 
of the Foreign Office, for it was he who, two years 
before, had conducted those negotiations with Den- 
mark which culminated in the bombardment and 
destruction of Copenhagen. "It is rather a pre- 
vailing notion here," wrote Pinkney from London, 
"that this gentleman's conduct will not and cannot 
be what we all wish." And this impression was so 
fully shared by Madison that he would not hasten 
his departure from Montpelier but left Jackson to 
his own devices at the capital for a full month. 

This interval of enforced inactivity had one un- 
happy consequence. Not finding employment for 
all his idle hom's, Jackson set himself to read the 
correspondence of his predecessor, and from it he 
drew the conclusion that Erskine was a greater fool 
than he had thought possible, and that the Ameri- 
can Government had been allowed to use language 
of which "every third word was a declaration of 
war." The further he read the greater his ire, so 
that when the President arrived in Washington 
(October 1), Jackson was fully resolved to let the 
American Government know what was due to a 



176 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

British Minister who had had audiences "with most 
of the sovereigns of Europe." 

Though neither the President nor Gallatin, to 
whose mature judgment he constantly turned, be- 
heved that Jackson had any proposals to make, 
they were willing to let Robert Smith carry on in- 
formal conversations with him. It speedily ap- 
peared that so far from making overtures, Jackson 
was disposed to await proposals. The President 
then instructed the Secretary of State to announce 
that further discussions would be "in the written 
form" and henceforth himself took direct charge of 
negotiations. The exchange of letters which fol- 
lowed reveals Madison at his best. His rapier-like 
thrusts soon pierced even the thick hide of this con- 
ceited Englishman. The stupid Smith who signed 
these letters appeared to be no mean adversary 
after all. 

In one of his rejoinders the British Minister 
yielded to a flash of temper and insinuated (as 
Canning in his instructions had done) that the 
American Government had known Erskine's in- 
structions and had encouraged him to set them 
aside — had connived in short at his wrongdoing. 
"Such insinuations," replied Madison sharply, 
"are inadmissible in the intercourse of a foreign 



PEACEABLE COERCION 177 

minister with a government that understands what 
it owes itself." "You will find that in my corre- 
spondence with you," wrote Jackson angrily, "I 
have carefully avoided drawing conclusions that 
did not necessarily follow from the premises ad- 
vanced by me, and least of all should I think of 
uttering an insinuation where I was unable to sub- 
stantiate a fact." A fatal outburst of temper 
which delivered the writer into the hands of his ad- 
versary. "Sir," wrote the President, still using the 
pen of his docile secretary, "finding that you have 
used a language which cannot be understood but as 
reiterating and even aggravating the same gross 
insinuation, it only remains, in order to preclude 
opportunities which are thus abused, to inform you 
that no further communications will be received 
from you." Therewith terminated the American 
mission of Francis James Jackson. 

Following this diplomatic episode, Congress 
again sought a way of escape from the conse- 
quences of total non-intercourse. It finally enacted 
a bill known as Macon's Bill No. 2, which in a sense 
reversed the former policy, since it left commerce 
everywhere free, and authorized the President, "in 
case either Great Britain or France shall, before the 



178 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

3d day of March next, so revoke or modify her 
edicts as that they shall cease to violate the neutral 
commerce of the United States," to cut off trade 
with the nation which continued to offend. The 
act thus gave the President an immense discretion- 
ary power which might bring the country face to 
face with war. It was the last act in that extraor- 
dinary series of restrictive measures which began 
with the Non-Intercourse Act of 1806. The policy 
of peaceful coercion entered on its last phase. 

And now, once again, the shadow of the Corsican 
fell across the seas. With the unerring shrewdness 
of an intellect never vexed by ethical considera- 
tions. Napoleon announced that he would meet the 
desires of the American Government. *'I am au- 
thorized to declare to you, Sir," wrote the Due de 
Cadore, INIinister of Foreign Affairs, to Armstrong, 
"that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, 
and that after November 1 they will cease to have 
effect — it being understood that in consequence 
of this declaration the English are to revoke their 
Orders-in-Council, and renounce the new principles 
of blockade which they have wished to establish ; or 
that the United States, conformably to the Act you 
have just communicated [the Macon Act], cause 
their rights to be respected by the English." 



PEACEABLE COERCION 179 

It might be supposed that President Madison, 
knowing with whom he had to deal, would have hesi- 
tated to accept Napoleon's asseverations at their 
face value. He had, indeed, no assurances beyond 
Cadore's letter that the French decrees had been 
repealed. But he could not let slip this opportu- 
nity to force Great Britain's hand. It seemed to 
be a last chance to test the effectiveness of peace- 
able coercion. On November 2, 1810, he issued 
the momentous proclamation which eventually 
made Great Britain rather than France the ob- 
ject of attack. " It has been officially made known 
to this government," said the President, "that 
the said edicts of France have been so revoked 
as that they ceased, on the first day of the pres- 
ent month, to violate the neutral commerce of 
the United States." Thereupon the Secretary of 
the Treasury instructed collectors of customs that 
commercial intercourse with Great Britain would 
be suspended after the 2d of February of the 
following year. 

The next three months were full of painful expe- 
riences for President Madison. He waited, and 
waited in vain, for authentic news of the formal re- 
peal of the French decrees; and while he waited, he 
was distressed and amazed to learn that American 



180 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

vessels were still being confiscated in French ports. 
In the midst of these uncertainties occurred the bi- 
ennial congressional elections, the outcome of which 
only deepened his perplexities. Nearly one-half 
of those who sat in the existing Congress failed 
of reelection, yet, by a vicious custom, the new 
House, which presumably reflected the popular 
mood in 1810, would not meet for thirteen months, 
while the old discredited Congress wearily dragged 
out its existence in a last session. Vigorous presi- 
dential leadership, it is true, might have saved the 
expiring Congress from the reproach of incapacity, 
but such leadership was not to be expected from 
James Madison. 

So it was that the President's message to this 
moribund Congress was simply a counsel of pru- 
dence and patience. It pointed out, to be sure, the 
uncertainties of the situation, but it did not sum- 
mon Congress sternly to face the alternatives. It 
alluded mildly to the need of a continuance of our 
defensive and precautionary arrangements, and 
suggested further organization and training of the 
militia; it contemplated with satisfaction the im- 
provement of the quantity and quality of the out- 
put of cannon and small arms; it set the seal of 
the President's approval upon the new military 



PEACEABLE COERCION 181 

academy; but nowhere did it sound a trumpet- 
call to real preparedness. 

Even to these mild suggestions Congress re- 
sponded indifferently. It slightly increased the 
naval appropriations, but it actually reduced the 
appropriations for the army; and it adjourned 
without acting on the bill authorizing the President 
to enroll fifty thousand volunteers. Personal ani- 
mosity and prejudice combined to defeat the pro- 
posals of the Secretary of the Treasury. A bill 
to recharter the national bank, which Gallatin re- 
garded as an indispensable fiscal agent, was de- 
feated; and a bill providing for a general increase 
of duties on imports to meet the deficit was laid 
aside. Congress would authorize a loan of five 
million dollars but no new taxes. Only one bill 
was enacted which could be said to sustain the Pres- 
ident's policy — that reviving certain parts of 
the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 against Great 
Britain. With this last helpless gasp the Eleventh 
Congress expired. 

The defeat of measures which the Administra- 
tion had made its own amounted to a vote of no con- 
fidence. Under similar circumstances an English 
Ministry would have either resigned or tested the 



182 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

sentiment of the country by a general election ; but 
the American Executive possesses no such means of 
appealing immediately and directly to the electo- 
rate. President and Congress must live out their 
allotted terms of oflSce, even though their antagon- 
ism paralyzes the operation of government. What, 
then, could be done to restore confidence in the Ad- 
ministration of President Madison and to establish 
a modus vivendi between Executive and Legislative.? 
It seemed to the Secretary of Treasury, smarting 
under the defeat of his bank bill, that he had be- 
come a burden to the Administration, an obstacle 
in the way of cordial cooperation between the 
branches of the Federal Government. The factions 
which had defeated his appointment to the De- 
partment of State seemed bent upon discrediting 
him and his policies. "I clearly perceive," he 
wrote to the President, "that my continuing a 
member of the present Administration is no longer 
of any public utility, invigorates the opposition 
against yourself, and must necessarily be attended 
with an increased loss of reputation by myself. Un- 
der those impressions, not without reluctance, and 
after perhaps hesitating too long in the hopes of 
a favorable change, I beg leave to tender you 
my resignation." 



PEACEABLE COERCION 183 

This timely letter probably saved the Adminis- 
tration. Not for an instant could the President 
consider sacrificing the man who for ten years had 
been the mainstay of Republican power. Madison 
acted with unwonted promptitude. He refused to 
accept Gallatin's resignation, and determined to 
break once and for all with the faction which had 
hounded Gallatin from the day of his appointment 
and which had foisted upon the President an un- 
welcome Secretary of State. Not Gallatin but 
Robert Smith should go. Still more surprising was 
Madison's quick decision to name Monroe as 
Smith's successor, if he could be prevailed upon to 
accept. Both Virginians understood the deeper 
personal and political significance of this appoint- 
ment. Madison sought an alliance with a faction 
which had challenged his administrative policy; 
Monroe inferred that no opposition would be inter- 
posed to his eventual elevation to the Presidency 
when Madison should retire. What neither for 
the moment understood was the effect which the 
appointment would have upon the foreign policy 
of the Administration. Monroe hesitated, for he 
and his friends had been open critics of the Presi- 
dent's pro-French policy. Was the new Secretary 
of State to be bound by this policy, or was the 



184 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

President prepared to reverse his course and effect 
a reconciliation with England? 

These very natural misgivings the President 
brushed aside by assuring Monroe's friends that he 
was very hopeful of settling all differences with 
both France and England. Certainly he had in no 
wise committed himself to a course which would 
prevent a renewal of negotiations with England ; he 
had always desired "a cordial accommodation." 
Thus reassured, Monroe accepted the invitation, 
never once doubting that he would reverse the poli- 
cy of the Administration, achieve a diplomatic tri- 
umph, and so appear as the logical successor to 
President Madison. 

Had the new Secretary of State known the in- 
structions which the British Foreign Office was 
drafting at this moment for Mr. Augustus J. Foster, 
Jackson's successor, he would have been less san- 
guine. This "very gentlemanlike young man," as 
Jackson called him, was told to make some slight 
concessions to American sentiment — he might 
make proper amends for the Chesapeake affair — 
but on the crucial matter of the French decrees he 
was bidden to hold rigidly to the uncompromis- 
ing position taken by the Foreign Office from the 
beginning — that the President was mistaken in 



PEACEABLE COERCION 185 

thinking that they had been repealed. The British 
Government could not modify its orders-in-coun- 
cil on unsubstantiated rumors that the offensive 
French decrees had been revoked. Secretly Foster 
was informed that the Ministry was prepared to re- 
taliate if the American Government persisted in 
shutting out British importations. No one in the 
Ministry, or for that matter in the British Isles, 
seems to have understood that the moment had 
come for concession and not retaliation, if peace- 
ful relations were to continue. 

It was most unfortunate that while Foster was 
on his way to the United States, British cruisers 
should have renewed the blockade of New York. 
Two frigates, the Melampus and the Guerriere, lay 
off Sandy Hook and resumed the old irritating 
practice of holding up American vessels and search- 
ing them for deserters. In the existing state of 
American feeling, with the Chesapeake outrage still 
unredressed, the behavior of the British command- 
ers was as perilous as walking through a powder 
magazine with a live coal. The American navy had 
suffered severely from Jefferson's ''chaste reforma- 
tion" but it had not lost its fighting spirit. OflScers 
who had served in the war with Tripoli prayed for a 



186 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

fair chance to avenge the Chesapeake; and the Sec- 
retary of the Navy had abetted this spirit in his 
orders to Commodore John Rodgers, who was pa- 
trolHng the coast with a squadron of frigates and 
sloops. "What has been perpetrated," Rodgers 
was warned, "may be again attempted. It is there- 
fore our duty to be prepared and determined at 
every hazard to vindicate the injured honor of our 
navy, and revive the drooping spirit of the nation." 
Under the circumstances it would have been lit- 
tle short of a miracle if an explosion had not oc- 
curred; yet for a year Rodgers sailed up and down 
the coast without encountering the British frigates. 
On May 16, 1811, however, Rodgers in his frigate, 
the President, sighted a suspicious vessel some fifty 
miles off Cape Henry. From her general appear- 
ance he judged her to be a man-of-war and prob- 
ably the Guerriere. He decided to approach her, he 
relates, in order to ascertain whether a certain sea- 
man alleged to have been impressed was aboard; 
but the vessel made off and he gave chase. By 
dusk the two ships were abreast. Exactly what 
then happened will probably never be known, but 
all accounts agree that a shot was fired and that 
a general engagement followed. Within fifteen 
minutes the strange vessel was disabled and lay 



PEACEABLE COERCION 187 

helpless under the guns of the President, with nine 
of her crew dead and twenty- three wounded. Then, 
to his intense disappointment, Rodgers learned that 
his adversary was not the Guerriere but the British 
sloop of war Little Belt, a craft greatly inferior 
to his own. 

However little this one-sided sea fight may have 
salved the pride of the American navy, it gave huge 
satisfaction to the general public. The Chesapeake 
was avenged. When Foster disembarked he found 
little interest in the reparations which he was 
charged to offer. He had been prepared to settle a 
grievance in a good-natured way ; he now felt him- 
self obliged to demand explanations. The boot was 
on the other leg; and the American public lost none 
of the humor of the situation. Eventually he 
offered to disavow Admiral Berkeley's act, to re- 
store the seamen taken from the Chesapeake, and to 
compensate them and their families. In the course 
of time the two unfortunates who had survived 
were brought from their prison at Halifax and re- 
stored to the decks of the Chesapeake in Boston 
Harbor. But as for the Little Belt, Foster had to 
rest content with the findings of an American court 
of inquiry which held that the British sloop had 
fired the first shot. 



188 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

As yet there were no visible signs that Monroe 
had effected a change in the foreign pohcy of the 
Administration, though he had given the President 
a momentary advantage over the opposition. An- 
other crisis was fast approaching. When Congress 
met a month earlier than usual, pursuant to the 
call of the President, the leadership passed from the 
Administration to a group of men who had lost all 
faith in commercial restrictions as a weapon of 
defense against foreign aggression. 



CHAPTER X 



THE WAR-HAWKS 



Among the many unsolved problems which Jeffer- 
son bequeathed to his successor in office was that 
of the southern frontier. Running lil^e a shuttle 
through the warp of his foreign policy had been his 
persistent desire to acquire possession of the Span- 
ish Floridas. This dominant desire, amounting 
almost to a passion, had mastered even his better 
judgment and had created dilemmas from which he 
did not escape without the imputation of duplicity. 
On his retirement he announced that he was leav- 
ing all these concerns "to be settled by my friend, 
IVIr. Madison," yet he could not resist the desire 
to direct the course of his successor. Scarcely a 
month after he left office he wrote, "I suppose 
the conquest of Spain will soon force a delicate 
question on you as to the Floridas and Cuba, which 
will offer themselves to you. Napoleon will cer- 
tainly give his consent without difficulty to our 

189 



190 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

receiving the Floridas, and with some difficulty 
possibly Cuba." 

In one respect Jefferson's intuition was correct. 
The attempt of Napoleon to subdue Spain and to 
seat his brother Joseph once again on the throne of 
Ferdinand VII was a turning point in the history of 
the Spanish colonies in America. One by one they 
rose in revolt and established revolutionary juntas 
either in the name of their deposed King or in pro- 
fessed cooperation with the insurrectionary gov- 
ernment which was resisting the invader. Events 
proved that independence was the inevitable issue 
of all these uprisings from the Rio de la Plata to 
the Rio Grande. 

In common with other Spanish provinces, West 
Florida felt the impact of this revolutionary spirit, 
but it lacked natural unity and a dominant Span- 
ish population. The province was in fact merely 
a strip of coast extending from the Perdido River 
to the Mississippi, indented with bays into which 
great rivers from the north discharged their turgid 
waters. Along these bays and rivers were scattered 
the inhabitants, numbering less than one hundred 
thousand, of whom a considerable portion had 
come from the States. There, as always on the fron- 
tier, land had been a lodestone attracting both the 



THE WAR-HAWKS 191 

speculator and the homeseeker. In the parishes 
of West Feliciana and Baton Rouge, in the allu- 
vial bottoms of the Mississippi, and in the settle- 
ments around Mobile Bay, American settlers pre- 
dominated, submitting with ill grace to the exac- 
tions of Spanish officials who were believed to be as 
corrupt as they were inefficient. 

If events had been allowed to take their natural 
course, W^est Florida would in all probability have 
fallen into the arms of the United States as Texas 
did three decades later. But the Virginia Presi- 
dents were too ardent suitors to await the slow 
progress of events; they meant to assist destiny. 
To this end President Jefferson had employed 
General Wilkinson, with indifferent success. Presi- 
dent Madison found more trustworthy agents in 
Governor Claiborne of New Orleans and Governor 
Holmes of Mississippi, whose letters reveal the ex- 
tent to which Madison was willing to meddle with 
destiny. " Nature had decreed the union of Florida 
with the United States," Claiborne affirmed; but 
he was not so sure that nature could be left to exe- 
cute her own decrees, for he strained every nerve to 
prepare the way for American intervention when 
the people of West Florida should declare them- 
selves free from Spain. Holmes also was instructed 



192 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

to prepare for this eventuality and to cooperate 
with Claiborne in West Florida "in diffusing the 
impressions we wish to be made there." 

The anticipated insurrection came off just when 
and where nature had decreed. In the summer of 
1810 a so-called "movement for self-government" 
started at Bayou Sara and at Baton Rouge, where 
nine-tenths of the inhabitants were Americans. 
The leaders took pains to assiu'e the Spanish Com- 
mandant that their motives were unimpeachable: 
nothing should be done which would in any wise 
conflict with the authority of their "loved and wor- 
thy sovereign, Don Ferdinand VII." They wished 
to relieve the people of the abuses under which they 
were suffering, but all should be done in the name 
of the King. The Commandant, De Lassus, was 
not without his suspicions of these patriotic gentle- 
men but he allowed himself to be swept along 
in the current. The several movements finally 
coalesced on the 25th of July in a convention near 
Baton Rouge, which declared itself "legally con- 
stituted to act in all cases of national concern 
. . . with the consent of the governor" and pro- 
fessed a desire "to promote the safety, honor, 
and happiness of our beloved king" as well as 
to rectify abuses in the province. It adjourned 



THE WAR-HAWKS 193 

with the familiar Spanish salutation which must 
have sounded ironical to the helpless De Lassus, 
"May God preserve you many years!" Were 
these pious professions farcical ? Or were they the 
sincere utterances of men who, like the patriots of 
1776, were driven by the march of events out of an 
attitude of traditional loyalty to the King into open 
defiance of his authority? 

The Commandant was thus thrust into a position 
where his every movement would be watched with 
distrust. The pretext for further action was soon 
given. An intercepted letter revealed that De 
Lassus had written to Governor Folch for an armed 
force. That "act of perfidy" was enough to dissolve 
the bond between the convention and the Com- 
mandant. On the 23d of September, under cover of 
night, an armed force shouting "Hurrah ! Washing- 
ton ! " overpowered the garrison of the fort at Baton 
Rouge, and three days later the con vention declared 
the independence of West Florida, "appealing to the 
Supreme Ruler of the World" for the rectitude of 
their intentions. What their intentions were is 
clear enough. Before the ink was dry on their dec- 
laration of independence, they wrote to the Ad- 
ministration at Washington, asking for the immedi- 
ate incorporation of West Florida into the Union. 



194 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Here was the blessed consummation of years 
of diplomacy near at hand. President Madison 
had only to reach out his hand and pluck the ripe 
fruit; yet he hesitated from constitutional scruples. 
Where was the authority which warranted the use 
of the army and navy to hold territory beyond the 
bounds of the United States.'^ Would not interven- 
tion, indeed, be equivalent to an unprovoked at- 
tack on Spain, a declaration of war.^* He set forth 
his doubts in a letter to Jefferson and hinted at the 
danger which in the end was to resolve all his 
doubts. Was there not grave danger that West 
Florida would pass into the hands of a third and 
dangerous party? The conduct of Great Britain 
showed a propensity to fish in troubled waters. 

On the 27th of October, President Madison is- 
sued a proclamation authorizing Governor Clai- 
borne to take possession of West Florida and to 
govern it as part of the Orleans Territory. He jus- 
tified his action, which had no precedent in Ameri- 
can diplomacy, by reasoning which was valid only 
if his fundamental premise was accepted. West 
Florida, he repeated, as a part of the Louisiana 
purchase belonged to the United States; but with- 
out abandoning its claim, the United States had 
hitherto suffered Spain to continue in possession, 



THE WAR-HAWKS 195 

looking forward to a satisfactory adjustment by 
friendly negotiation. A crisis had arrived, how- 
ever, which had subverted Spanish authority; and 
the failure of the United States to take the territory 
would threaten the interests of all parties and seri- 
ously disturb the tranquillity of the adjoining terri- 
tories. In the hands of the United States, West 
Florida would "not cease to be a subject of fair and 
friendly negotiation." In his annual message 
President Madison spoke of the people of West 
Florida as having been "brought into the bosom of 
the American family," and two days later Gover- 
nor Claiborne formally took possession of the coun- 
try to the Pearl River. How territory which had 
thus been incorporated could still remain a subject 
of fair negotiation does not clearly appear, except 
on the supposition that Spain would go through 
the forms of a negotiation which could have but 
one outcome. 

The enemies of the Administration seized eager- 
ly upon the flaws in the President's logic, and 
pressed his defenders sorely in the closing session of 
the Eleventh Congress. Conspicuous among the 
champions of the Administration was young Henry 
Clay, then serving out the term of Senator Thurs- 
ton of Kentucky who had resigned his office. This 



196 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

eloquent young lawyer, now in his thirty-third 
year, had been born and bred in the Old Dominion 
— a typical instance of the American boy who had 
nothing but his own head and hands wherewith to 
make his way in the world. He had a slender 
schooling, a much-abbreviated law education in 
a lawyer's office, and little enough of that in- 
tellectual discipline needed for leadership at the 
bar; yet he had a clever wit, an engaging per- 
sonality, and a rare facility in speaking, and he 
capitalized these assets. He was practising law in 
Lexington, Kentucky, when he was appointed to 
the Senate. 

What this persuasive Westerner had to say on 
the American title to West Florida was neither new 
nor convincing; but what he advocated as an 
American policy was both bold and challenging. 
"The eternal principles of self preservation" justi- 
fied in his mind the occupation of West Florida, ir- 
respective of any title. With Cuba and Florida in 
the possession of a foreign maritime power, the im- 
mense extent of country watered by streams enter- 
ing the Gulf would be placed at the mercy of that 
power. Neglect the proffered boon and some na- 
tion profiting by this error would seize this southern 
frontier. It had been intimated that Great Britain 



THE WAR-HAWKS 197 

might take sides with Spain to resist the occupation 
of Florida. To this covert threat Clay rephed. 

Sir, is the time never to arrive, when we may manage 
our own affairs without the fear of insulting his Bri- 
tannic Majesty? Is the rod of British power to be for- 
ever suspended over our heads? Does the President 
refuse to continue a correspondence with a minister, 
who violates the decorum belonging to his diplomatic 
character, by giving and deliberately repeating an 
affront to the whole nation? We are instantly men- 
aced with the chastisement which English pride will 
not fail to inflict. Whether we assert our rights by sea, 
or attempt their maintenance by land — whitherso- 
ever we turn ourselves, this phantom incessantly pur- 
sues us. Already has it had too much influence on the 
councils of the nation. It contributed to the repeal of 
the embargo — that dishonorable repeal, which has so 
much tarnished the character of our government. 
Mr. President, I have before said on this floor, and now 
take occasion to remark, that I most sincerely desire 
peace and amity with England; that I even prefer an 
adjustment of all differences with her, before one with 
any other nation. But if she persists in a denial of 
justice to us, or if she avails herself of the occupation of 
West Florida, to commence war upon us, I trust and 
hope that all hearts will unite, in a bold and vigorous 
vindication of our rights. 

I am not, sir, in favour of cherishing the passion of 
conquest. But I must be permitted, in conclusion, to 
indulge the hope of seeing, ere long, the new United 
States (if you will allow me the expression) embracing. 



198 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

not only the old thirteen States, but the entire country 
east of the Mississippi, including East Florida, and 
some of the territories of the north of us also. 

Conquest was not a familiar word in the vocabu- 
lary of James Madison, and be may well have prayed 
to be delivered from the hands of his friends, if 
this was to be the keynote of their defense of his 
policy in West Florida. Nevertheless, he was im- 
pelled in spite of himself in the direction of Clay's 
vision. If West Florida in the hands of an unfriend- 
ly power was a menace to the southern frontier, 
East Florida from the Perdido to the ocean was 
not less so. By the 3d of January, 1811, he was 
prepared to recommend secretly to Congress that 
he should be authorized to take temporary pos- 
session of East Florida, in case the local authori- 
ties should consent or a foreign power should at- 
tempt to occupy it. And Congress came promptly 
to his aid with the desired authorization. 

Twelve months had now passed since the people 

c^)f the several States had expressed a judgment at 

t'^he polls by electing a new Congress. The Twelfth 

^Congress was indeed new in more senses than one. 

Some seventy representatives took their seats for 

the first time, and fully half of the familiar faces 



THE WAR-HAWKS 199 

were missing. Its first and most significant act, be- 
traying a new spirit, was the choice as Speaker of 
Henry Clay, who had exchanged his seat in the 
Senate for the more stirring arena of the House. 
In all the history of the House there is only one 
other instance of the choice of a new member as 
Speaker. It was not merely a personal tribute to 
Clay but an endorsement of the forward-looking 
policy which he had so vigorously championed in 
the Senate. The temper of the House was bold and 

' aggressive, and it saw its mood reflected in the 
mobile face of the young Kentuckian. 

The Speaker of the House had hitherto followed 
English traditions, choosing rather to stand as an 
impartial moderator than to act as a legislative 
leader. For British traditions of any sort Clay had 
little respect. He was resolved to be the leader of 
the House, and if necessary to join his privileges as 
Speaker to his rights as a member, in order to shape 
the policies of Congress. Almost his first act as 
Speaker was to appoint to important committees 
those who shared his impatience with commercial 
restrictions as a means of coercing Great Britain. 
On the Committee on Foreign Relations — second 
to none in importance at this moment — he placed 

ff Peter B. Porter of New York, young John C. 



200 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Calhoun of South CaroHna, and Felix Grundy of 
Tennessee; the chairmanship of the Committee on 
Naval Affairs he gave to Langdon Cheves of 
South Carolina; and the chairmanship of the Com- 
mittee on Military Affairs, to another South Caro- 
linian, David Williams. There was nothing fortui- 
tous in this selection of representatives from the 
South and Southwest for important committee 
posts. Like Clay himself, these young intrepid 
spirits were solicitous about the southern frontier 
— about the ultimate disposal of the Floridas ; like 
Clay, they had lost faith in temporizing policies; 
like Clay, they were prepared for battle with the 
old adversary if necessary. 

In the President's message of November 5, 1811, 
there was just one passage which suited the mood 
of this group of younger Republicans. After a re- 
cital of injuries at the hands of the British minis- 
try, Madison wrote with unwonted vigor: "With 
this evidence of hostile inflexibility in trampling on 
rights which no independent nation can relinquish 
Congress will feel the duty of putting the United 
States into an armor and an attitude demanded 
by the crisis; and corresponding with the national 
spirit and expectations." It was this part of the 
message which the Committee on Foreign Relations 



THE WAR-HAWKS 201 

took for the text of its report. The time had 
arrived, in the opinion of the committee, when for- 
bearance ceased to be a virtue and when Congress 
must as a sacred duty "call forth the patriotism 
and resources of the country." Nor did the com- 
mittee hesitate to point out the immediate steps to 
be taken if the country were to be put into a state 
of preparedness. Let the ranks of the regular army 
be filled and ten regiments added; let the President 
call for fifty thousand volunteers; let all available 
war- vessels be put in commission; and let merchant 
vessels arm in their own defense. 

If these recommendations were translated into 
acts, they would carry the country appreciably 
nearer war; but the members of the committee 
were not inclined to shrink from the consequences. 
To a man they agreed that war was preferable to 
inglorious submission to continued outrages, and 
that the outcome of war would be positively advan- 
tageous. Porter, who represented the westernmost 
district of a State profoundly interested in the 
northern frontier, doubted not that Great Britain 
could be despoiled of her extensive provinces along 
the borders to the North. Grundy, speaking for 
the Southwest, contemplated with satisfaction the 
time when the British would be driven from the 



202 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

continent. *'I feel anxious," he concluded, "not 
only to add the Floridas to the South, but the Can- 
adas to the North of this Empire." Others, like 
Calhoun, who now made his entrance as a debater, 
refused to entertain these mercenary calculations. 
"Sir," exclaimed Calhoun, his deep-set eyes flash- 
ing, "I only know of one principle to make a nation 
great, to produce in this country not the form but 
the real spirit of union, and that is, to protect every 
citizen in the lawful pursuit of his business. . . . 
Protection and patriotism are reciprocal." 

But these young Republicans marched faster 
than the rank and file. Not so lightly were Jeffer- 
sonian traditions to be thrown aside. The old Re- 
publican prejudice against standing armies and sea- 
going navies still survived. Four weary months of 
discussion produced only two measures of military 
importance, one of which provided for the addi- 
tion to the army of twenty-five thousand men en- 
listed for five years, and the other for the call- 
ing into service of fifty thousand state militia. 
The proposal of the naval committee to appropri- 
ate seven and a half million dollars to build a new 
navy was voted down; Gallatin's urgent appeal 
for new taxes fell upon deaf ears; and Congress 
proposed to meet the new military expenditure 



THE WAR-HAWKS 203 

by the dubious expedient of a loan of eleven 
million dollars. 

A hesitation which seemed fatal paralyzed all 
branches of the Federal Government in the spring 
months. Congress was obviously reluctant to fol- 
low the lead of the radicals who clamored for war 
with Great Britain. The President was unwilling 
to recommend a declaration of war, though all evi- 
dence points to the conclusion that he and his ad- 
visers believed war inevitable. The nation was di- 
vided in sentiment, the Federalists insisting with 
some plausibility that France was as great an 
offender as Great Britain and pointing to the re- 
cent captures of American merchantmen by French 
cruisers as evidence that the decrees had not been 
repealed. Even the President was impressed by 
these unfriendly acts and soberly discussed with 
his mentor at Monticello the possibility of war 
with both France and England. There was a mo- 
ment in March, indeed, when he was disposed to 
listen to moderate Republicans who advised him to 
send a special mission to England as a last chance. 

What were the considerations which fixed the 
mind of the nation and of Congress upon war with 
Great Britain? Merely to catalogue the accu- 
mulated grievances of a decade does not suffice. 



204 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Nations do not arrive at decisions by mathemati- 
cal computation of injuries received, but rather be- 
cause of a sense of accumulated wrongs which may 
or may not be measured by losses in life and prop- 
erty. And this sense of wrongs is the more acute 
in proportion to the racial propinquity of the of- 
fender. The most bitter of all feuds are those be- 
tween peoples of the same blood. It was just be- 
cause the mother country from which Americans 
had won their independence was now denying the 
fruits of that independence that she became the 
object of attack. In two particulars was Great 
Britain offending and France not. The racial dif- 
ferences between French and American seamen 
were too conspicuous to countenance impressment 
into the navy of Napoleon. No injuries at the 
hands of France bore any similarity to the Chesa- 
peake outrage. Nor did France menace the fron- 
tier and the frontier folk of the United States by 
collusion with the Indians. 

To suppose that the settlers beyond the Alle- 
ghanies were eager to fight Great Britain solely for 
"free trade and sailors' rights" is to assume a 
stronger consciousness of national unity than ex- 
isted anywhere in the United States at this time. 
These western pioneers had stronger and more 



THE WAR-HAWKS 205 

immediate motives for a reckoning with the old 
adversary. Their occupation of the Northwest had 
been hindered at every turn by the red man, who, 
they beheved, had been sustained in his resistance 
directly by British traders and indirectly by the 
British Government. Documents now abundantly 
prove that the suspicion was justified. The key to 
the early history of the northwestern frontier is the 
fur trade. It was for this lucrative traffic that 
England retained so long the western posts which 
she had agreed to surrender by the Peace of Paris. 
Out of the region between the Illinois, the Wabash, 
the Ohio, and Lake Erie, pelts had been shipped 
year after year to the value annually of some 
£100,000, in return for the products of British 
looms and forges. It was the constant aim of the 
British trader in the Northwest to secure "the ex- 
clusive advantages of a valuable trade during 
Peace and the zealous assistance of brave and use- 
ful auxiliaries in time of War." To dispossess the 
redskin of his lands and to wrest the fur trade from 
British control was the equally constant desire 
of every full-blooded Western American. Henry 
Clay voiced this desire when he exclaimed in the 
speech already quoted, *'The conquest of Canada 
is in your power. . . . Is it nothing to extinguish 



206 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the torch that lights up savage warfare? Is it 
nothing to acquire the entire fur-trade connected 
with that country, and to destroy the temptation 
and opportunity of violating your revenue and 
other laws?"' 

The Twelfth Congress had met under the shadow 
of an impending catastrophe in the Northwest. 
Reports from all sources pointed to an Indian war 
of considerable magnitude. Tecumseh and his 
brother the Prophet had formed an Indian confed- 
eracy which was believed to embrace not merely 
the tribes of the Northwest but also the Creeks and 
Seminoles of the Gulf region. Persistent rumors 
strengthened long-nourished suspicions and con- 
nected this Indian unrest with the British agents on 
the Canadian border. In the event of war, so it 
was said, the British paymasters would let the red- 
skins loose to massacre helpless women and chil- 
dren. Old men retold the outrages of these savage 
fiends during the War of Independence. 

On the 7th of November — three days after the 



' A memorial of the fur traders of Canada to the Secretary of 
State for War and Colonies (1814), printed as Appendix N to 
Davidson's The North West Company, throws much light on this 
obscure feature of Western history. See also an article on "The 
Insurgents of 1811," in the American Historical Association 
Report (1911) by D. R. Anderson. 



THE WAR-HAWKS 207 

assembling of Congress — Governor William Henry 
Harrison of the Indiana Territory encountered the 
Indians of Tecumseh's confederation at Tippe- 
canoe and by a costly but decisive victory crushed 
the hopes of their chieftains. As the news of these 
events drifted into Washington, it colored percep- 
tibly the minds of those who doubted whether 
Great Britain or France were the greater offender. 
Grundy, who had seen three brothers killed by 
Indians and his mother reduced from opulence to 
poverty in a single night, spoke passionately of 
that power which was taking every "opportunity 
of intriguing with our Indian neighbors and setting 
on the ruthless savages to tomahawk our women 
and children." "War," he exclaimed, "is not to 
commence by sea or land, it is already begun, 
and some of the richest blood of our country has 
been shed.'* 

Still the President hesitated to lead. On the 
31st of March, to be sure, he suffered Monroe to tell 
a committee of the House that he thought war 
should be declared before Congress adjourned and 
that he was willing to recommend an embargo 
if Congress would agree; but after an embargo 
for ninety days had been declared on the 4th of 
April, he told the British Minister that it was not, 



208 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

could not be considered, a war measure. He still 
waited for Congress to shoulder the responsibility 
of declaring war. Why did he hesitate.'* Was he 
aware of the woeful state of unpreparedness every- 
where apparent and was he therefore desirous of 
delay.'* Some color is given to this excuse by his 
efforts to persuade Congress to create two assistant 
secretaryships of war. Or was he conscious of his 
own inability to play the role of War-President? 

The personal question which thrust itself upon 
Madison at this time was, indeed, whether he 
would have a second term of office. An old story, 
often told by his detractors, recounts a dramatic 
incident which is said to have occurred, just as the 
congressional caucus of the party was about to 
meet. A committee of Republican Congressmen 
headed by Mr. Speaker Clay waited upon the 
President to tell him, that if he wished a renomina- 
tion, he must agree to recommend a declaration of 
war. The story has never been corroborated; and 
the dramatic interview probably never occurred; 
yet the President knew, as every one knew, that his 
renomination was possible only with the support of 
the war party. When he accepted the nomination 
from the Republican caucus on the 18th of May, he 
tacitly pledged himself to acquiesce in the plans of 



THE WAR-HAWKS 209 

the war-hawks. Some days later an authentic 
interview did take place between the President 
and a deputation of Congressmen headed by the 
Speaker, in the course of which the President was 
assured of the support of Congress if he would 
recommend a declaration. Subsequent events 
point to a complete understanding. 

Clay now used all the latent powers of his office 
to aid the war party. Even John Randolph, ever 
a thorn in the side of the party, was made to 
wince. On the 29th of May, Randolph undertook 
to address the House on the declaration of war 
which, he had been credibly informed, was immi- 
nent. He was called to order by a member because 
no motion was before the House. He protested 
that his remarks were prefatory to a motion. The 
Speaker ruled that he must first make a motion. 
*'My proposition is," responded Randolph sullenly, 
*'that it is not expedient at this time to resort to a 
war against Great Britain." "Is the motion sec- 
onded.f^" asked the Speaker. Randolph protested 
that a second was not needed and appealed from 
the decision of the chair. Then, when the House 
sustained the Speaker, Randolph, having found a 
seconder, once more began to address the House. 
Again he was called to order ; the House must first 



210 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

vote to consider the motion. Randolph was beside 
himself with rage. The last vestige of liberty of 
speech was vanishing, he declared. But Clay was 
imperturbable. The question of consideration was 
put and lost. Randolph had found his master. 

On the 1st of June the President sent to Con- 
gress what is usually denominated a war message; 
yet it contained no positive recommendation of 
war. "Congress must decide," said the President, 
"whether the United States shall continue passive" 
or oppose force to force. Prefaced to this impotent 
conclusion was along recital of "progressive usur- 
pations" and "accumulating wrongs" — a recital 
which had become so familiar in state papers as al- 
most to lose its power to provoke popular resent- 
ment. It was significant, however, that the Presi- 
dent put in the forefront of his catalogue of wrongs 
the impressment of American sailors on the high 
seas. No indignity touched national pride so keen- 
ly and none so clearly differentiated Great Britain 
from France as the national enemy. Almost equally 
provocative was the harassing of incoming and out- 
going vessels by British cruisers which hovered off 
the coasts and even committed depredations within 
the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. 
Pretended blockades without an adequate force 



THE WAR-HAWKS 211 

was a third charge against the British Government, 
and closely connected with it that "sweeping system 
of blockades, under the name of orders-in-council," 
against which two Republican Administrations had 
struggled in vain. 

There was in the count not an item, indeed, which 
could not have been charged against Great Britain 
in the fall of 1807, when the public clamored for war 
after the Chesapeake outrage. Four long years had 
been spent in testing the efficacy of commercial re- 
strictions, and the country was if anything less pre- 
pared for the alternative. When President Madi- 
son penned this message he was, in fact, making 
public avowal of the breakdown of a great Jeffer- 
sonian principle. Peaceful coercion was proved to 
be an idle dream. 

So well advised was the Committee on Foreign 
Relations to which the President's message was re- 
ferred that it could present a long report two days 
later, again reviewing the case against the adver- 
sary in great detail. "The contest which is now 
forced on the United States," it concluded, "is radi- 
cally a contest for their sovereignty and independ- 
ency." There was now no other alternative than 
an immediate appeal to arms. On the same day 
Calhoun introduced a bill declaring war against 



212 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Great Britain ; and on the 4th of June in secret ses- 
sion the war party mustered by the Speaker bore 
down all opposition and carried the bill by a vote of 
79 to 49. On the 7th of June the Senate followed 
the House by the close vote of 19 to 14; and on the 
following day the President promptly signed the 
bill which marked the end of an epoch. 

It is one of the bitterest ironies in history that 
just twenty -four hours before war was declared at 
Washington, the new Ministry at Westminster an- 
nounced its intention of immediately suspending the 
orders-in-council. Had President Madison yielded 
to those moderates who advised him in April to send 
a minister to England, he might have been apprized 
of that gradual change in public opinion which was 
slowly undermining the authority of Spencer Per- 
ceval's ministry and commercial system. He had 
only to wait a little longer to score the greatest dip- 
lomatic triumph of his generation; but fate willed 
otherwise. No ocean cable flashed the news of the 
abrupt change which followed the tragic assassina- 
tion of Perceval and the formation of a new minis- 
try. When the slow-moving packets brought the 
tidings, war had begun. 



CHAPTER XI 

PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 

The dire calamity which Jefferson and his col- 
leagues had for ten years bent all their ener- 
gies to avert had now befallen the young Re- 
public. War, with all its train of attendant evils, 
stalked upon the stage, and was about to test the 
hearts of pacifist and war-hawk alike. But noth- 
ing marked off the younger Republicans more 
sharply from the generation to which Jefferson, 
Madison, and Gallatin belonged than the posi- 
tive relief with which they hailed this break with 
Jeffersonian tradition. This attitude was some- 
thing quite different from the usual intrepidity 
of youth in the face of danger; it was bot- 
tomed upon the conviction which Clay expressed 
when he answered the question, "What are we to 
gain by the war? " by saying, " What are we not to 
lose by peace? Commerce, character, a nation's 
best treasure, honor!" Calhoun had reached the 

213 



214 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

same conclusion. The restrictive system as a 
means of resistance and of obtaining redress for 
wrongs, he declared to be unsuited to the genius of 
the American people. It required the most arbi- 
trary laws; it rendered government odious; it bred 
discontent. War, on the other hand, strengthened 
the national character, fed the flame of patriot- 
ism, and perfected the organization of government. 
"Sir," he exclaimed, "I would prefer a single vic- 
tory over the enemy by sea or land to all the good 
we shall ever derive from the continuation of the 
non-importation act ! " The issue was thus square- 
ly faced : the alternative to peaceable coercion was 
now to be given a trial. 

Scarcely less remarkable was the buoyant spirit 
with which these young Republicans faced the exi- 
gencies of war. Defeat was not to be found in their 
vocabulary. Clay pictured in fervent rhetoric a 
victorious army dictating the terms of peace at 
Quebec or at Halifax; Calhoun scouted the sug- 
gestion of unpreparedness, declaring that in four 
weeks after the declaration of war the whole of 
Upper and part of Lower Canada would be in 
our possession; and even soberer patriots believed 
that the conquest of Canada was only a matter 
of marching across the frontier to Montreal or 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 215 

Quebec. But for that matter older heads were not 
much wiser as prophets of military events. Even 
JefiFerson assured the President that he had never 
known a war entered into under more favorable 
auspices, and predicted that Great Britain would 
surely be stripped of all her possessions on this con- 
tinent; while Monroe seems to have anticipated a 
short decisive war terminating in a satisfactory 
accommodation with England. As for the Presi- 
dent, he averred many years later that while he 
knew the unprepared state of the country, "he 
esteemed it necessary to throw forward the flag 
of the country, sure that the people would press 
onward and defend it." 

There is something at once humorous and pa- 
thetic in this self-portrait of Madison throwing for- 
ward the flag of his country and summoning his 
legions to follow on. Never was a man called to 
lead in war who had so little of the martial in his 
character, and yet so earnest a purpose to rise to 
the emergency. An observer describes him, the 
day after war was declared, "visiting in person — 
a thing never known before — all the oflSces of the 
Departments of War and the Navy, stimulating 
everything in a manner worthy of a little com- 
mander-in-chief, with his httle round hat and huge 



216 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

cockade." Stimulation was certainly needed in 
these two departments as events proved, but at- 
tention to petty details which should have been 
watched by subordinates is not the mark of a great 
commander. Jefferson afterward consoled Madi- 
son for the defeat of his armies by writing: "All 
you can do is to order — execution must depend on 
others and failures be imputed to them alone." 
Jefferson failed to perceive what Madison seems 
always to have forgotten, that a commander-in- 
chief who appoints and may remove his subor- 
dinates can never escape responsibility for their 
failures. The President's first duty was not to 
stimulate the performance of routine in the depart- 
ments but to make sure of the competence of the 
executive heads of those departments. 

William Eustis of Massachusetts, Secretary of 
War, was not without some little military expe- 
rience, having served as a surgeon in the Revolu- 
tionary army, but he lacked every qualification for 
the onerous task before him. Senator Crawford of 
Georgia wrote to Monroe caustically that Eustis 
should have been forming general and compre- 
hensive arrangements for the organization of the 
troops and for the prosecution of campaigns, in- 
stead of consuming his time reading advertisements 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 217 

of petty retailing merchants, to find where he could 
purchase one hundred shoes or two hundred hats. 
Of Paul Hamilton, the Secretary of Navy, even 
less could be expected, for he seems to have had 
absolutely no experience to qualify him for the post. 
Senator Crawford intimated that in instructing 
his naval ofiBcers Hamilton impressed upon them 
the desirability of keeping their superiors supplied 
with pineapples and other tropical fruits — an ill- 
natured comment which, true or not, gives us the 
measure of the man. Both Monroe and Gallatin 
shared the prevailing estimate of the Secretaries 
of War and of the Navy and expressed themselves 
without reserve to Jefferson; but the President 
with characteristic inaecision hesitated to purge his 
Cabinet of these two incompetents, and for his 
want of decision he paid dearly. 

The President had just left the Capital for his 
country place at Montpelier toward the end of 
August, when the news came that General William 
Hull, who had been ordered to invade Upper Can- 
ada and begin the military promenivde to Que- 
bec, had surrendered Detroit and his entire army 
without firing a gun. It was a crushing disaster 
and a well-deserved rebuke for the Administra- 
tion, for whether the fault was Hull's or Eustis's, 



218 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the President had to shoulder the responsibility. 
His first thought was to retrieve the defeat by com- 
missioning Monroe to command a fresh army for 
the capture of Detroit; but this proposal which ap- 
pealed strongly to Monroe had to be put aside — 
fortunately for all concerned, for Monroe's desire 
for military glory was probably not equalled by 
his capacity as a commander and the western cam- 
paign proved incomparably more difficult than 
wiseacres at Washington imagined. 

What was needed, indeed, was not merely able 
commanders in the field, though they were difficult 
enough to find. There was much truth in Jeffer- 
son's naive remark to Madison : "The creator has 
not thought proper to mark those on the forehead 
who are of the stuff to make good generals. We 
are first, therefore, to seek them, blindfold, and 
then let them learn the trade at the expense of 
great losses." But neither seems to have com- 
prehended that their opposition to military prepar- 
edness had caused this dearth of talent and was 
now forcing the Administration to select blindfold. 
More pressing even than the need of tacticians was 
the need of organizers of victory. The utter fail- 
ure of the Niagara campaign vacated the office of 
Secretary of War; and with Eustis retired also the 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 219 

Secretary of the Navy. Monroe took over the 
duties of the one temporarily, and William Jones, 
a shipowner of Philadelphia, succeeded Hamilton. 
If the President seriously intended to make Mon- 
roe Secretary of War and the head of the General 
Staff, he speedily discovered that he was powerless 
to do so. The Republican leaders in New York 
felt too keenly Josiah Quincy's taunt about a 
despotic Cabinet ''composed, to all efficient pur- 
poses, of two Virginians and a foreigner" to permit 
Monroe to absorb two cabinet posts. To appease 
this jealousy of Virginia, Madison made an ap- 
pointment which very nearly shipwrecked his Ad- 
ministration: he invited General John Armstrong 
of New York to become Secretary of War. What- 
ever may be said of Armstrong's qualifications 
for the post, his presence in the Cabinet was 
most inadvisable, for he did not and could not 
inspire the personal confidence of either Gallatin 
or Monroe. Once in office, he turned Monroe 
into a relentless enemy and fairly drove Galla- 
tin out of office in disgust by appointing his 
old enemy, William Duane, editor of the Aurora, 
to the post of Adjutant-General. "And Arm- 
strong!" — said Dallas who subsequently as Sec- 
retary of War knew whereof he spoke — "he was 



220 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the devil from the beginning, is now, and ever 
will be!" 

The man of clearest vision in these unhappy 
months of 1812 was undoubtedly Albert Gallatin. 
The defects of Madison as a War-President he had 
long foreseen; the need of reorganizing the Execu- 
tive Departments he had pointed out as soon as 
war became inevitable; and the problem of financ- 
ing the war he had attacked farsightedly, fear- 
lessly, and without regard to political consistency. 
No one watched the approach of hostilities with a 
bitterer sense of blasted hopes. For ten years he 
had labored to limit expenditures, sacrificing even 
the military and naval establishments, that the 
people might be spared the burden of needless 
taxes; and within this decade he had also scaled 
down the national debt one-half, so that posterity 
might not be saddled with burdens not of its own 
choosing. And now war threatened to undo his 
work. The young republic was after all not to lead 
its own life, realize a unique destiny, but to tread 
the old well-worn path of war, armaments, and 
high-handed government. Well, he would save 
what he could, do his best to avert "perpetual 
taxation, military establishments, and other cor- 
rupting or anti-republican habits or institutions." 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 221 

If Gallatin at first underrated the probable 
revenue for war purposes, he speedily confessed his 
error and set before Congress inexorably the neces- 
sity for new taxes — aye, even for an internal tax, 
which he had once denounced as loudly as any 
Republican. For more than a year after the decla- 
ration of war, Congress was deaf to pleas for new 
sources of revenue; and it was not, indeed, until the 
last year of the war that it voted the taxes which in 
the long run could alone support the public credit. 
Meantime, facing a depleted Treasury, Gallatin 
found himself reduced to a mere "dealer of loans" 

— a position utterly abhorrent to him. Even his 
eflForts to place the loans which Congress authorized 
must have failed but for the timely aid of three men 
whom Quincy would have contemptuously termed 
foreigners, for all like Gallatin were foreign-born 

— Astor, Girard, and Parish. Utterly weary of his 
thankless job, Gallatin seized upon the opportunity 
afforded by the Russian offer of mediation to leave 
the Cabinet and perhaps to end the war by a diplo- 
matic stroke. He asked and received an appoint- 
ment as one of the three American commissioners. 

If Madison really believed that the people of the 
United States would unitedly press onward and 



222 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

defend the flag when once he had thrown it for- 
ward, he must have been strangely insensitive to the 
disaffection in New England. Perhaps, like Jeffer- 
son in the days of the embargo, he mistook the 
spirit of this opposition, thinking that it was largely 
partisan clamor which could safely be disregarded. 
What neither of these Virginians appreciated was 
the peculiar fanatical and sectional character of 
this Federalist opposition, and the extremes to 
which it would go. Yet abundant evidence lay 
before their eyes. Thirty-four Federalist members 
of the House, nearly all from New England, issued 
an address to their constituents bitterly arraigning 
the Administration and deploring the declaration 
of war; the House of Representatives of Massachu- 
setts, following this example, published another ad- 
dress, denouncing the war as a wanton sacrifice of 
the best interests of the people and imploring all 
good citizens to meet in town and county assem- 
blies to protest and to resolve not to volunteer ex- 
cept for a defensive war; and a meeting of citizens 
of Rockingham County, New Hampshire, adopted 
a memorial drafted by young Daniel Webster, 
which hinted that the separation of the States 
— "an event fraught with incalculable evils" — 
might sometime occur on just such an occasion as 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 223 

this. Town after town, and county after county, 
took up the hue and cry, keeping well within the 
Hmits of constitutional opposition, it is true, but 
weakening the arm of the Government just when 
it should have struck the enemy effective blov/s. 

Nor was the President without enemies in his 
own political household. The Republicans of New 
York, always lukewarm in their support of the Vir- 
ginia Dynasty, were now bent upon preventing his 
reelection. They found a shrewd and not over- 
scrupulous leader in DeWitt Clinton and an adroit 
campaign manager in Martin Van Buren. Both 
belonged to that school of New York politicians of 
which Burr had been master. Anything to beat 
Madison was their cry. To this end they were 
willing to condemn the war-policy, to promise a 
vigorous prosecution of the war, and even to nego- 
tiate for peace. "VNTiat made this division in the 
ranks of the Republicans so serious was the willing- 
ness of the New England Federalists to make com- 
mon cause with Clinton. In September a conven- 
tion of Federalists endorsed his nomination for 
the Presidency. 

Under the weight of accumulating disasters, 
military and political, it seemed as though Madi- 
son must go down in defeat. Every New England 



224 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

State but Vermont cast its electoral votes for Clin- 
ton; all the Middle States but Pennsylvania also 
supported him; and Maryland divided its vote. 
Only the steadiness of the Southern Republicans 
and of Pennsylvania saved Madison; a change of 
twenty electoral votes would have ended the Vir- 
ginia Dynasty. ' Now at least Madison must have 
realized the poignant truth which the Federalists 
were never tired of repeating : he had entered upon 
the war as President of a divided people. 

Only a few months' experience was needed to 
convince the military authorities at Washington 
that the war must be fought mainly by volunteers. 
Every military consideration derived from Amer- 
ican history warned against this policy, it is true, 
but neither Congress nor the people would enter- 
tain for an instant the thought of conscription. 
Only with great reluctance and under pressure had 
Congress voted to increase the regular army and 
to authorize the President to raise fifty thousand 
volunteers. The results of this legislation were 
disappointing, not to say humiliating. The condi- 
tions of enlistment were not such as to encour- 
age recruiting; and even when the pay had been 
increased and the term of service shortened, few 

' In the electoral vote Madison received 128; Clinton, 89. 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 225 

able-bodied citizens would respond. If any such 
desired to serve their country, they enrolled in 
the State militia which the President had been au- 
thorized to call into active service for six months. 

In default of a well-disciplined regular army and 
an adequate volunteer force, the Administration 
was forced more and more to depend upon such 
quotas of militia as the States would supply. How 
precarious was the hold of the national Govern- 
ment upon the State forces, appeared in the first 
months of the war. When called upon to supply 
troops to relieve the regulars in the coast defenses, 
the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut 
flatly refused, holding that the commanders of the 
State militia, and not the President, had the power 
to decide when exigencies demanded the use of the 
militia in the service of the United States. In his 
annual message Madison termed this "a novel and 
unfortunate exposition" of the Constitution, and he 
pointed out — what indeed was sufficiently obvious 
— that if the authority of the United States could be 
thus frustrated during actual war, "they are not 
one nation for the purpose most of all requiring it." 
But what was the President to do? Even if he, 
James Madison, author of the Virginia Resolutions 
of 1798, could so forget his political creed as to 



226 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

conceive of coercing a sovereign state, where was 
the army which would do his bidding? The Presi- 
dent was the victim of his own political theory. 

These bitter revelations of 1812 — the disaffec- 
tion of New England, the incapacity of two of his 
secretaries, the disasters of his staff officers on the 
frontier, the slow recruiting, the defiance of Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut — almost crushed the 
President. Never physically robust, he succumbed 
to an insidious intermittent fever in June and was 
confined to his bed for weeks. So serious was his 
condition that Mrs. Madison was in despair and 
scarcely left his side for five long weeks. "Even 
now," she wrote to Mrs. Gallatin, at the end of 
July, "I watch over him as I would an infant, 
so precarious is his convalescence." The rumor 
spread that he was not likely to survive, and poli- 
ticians in Washington began to speculate on the 
succession to the Presidency. 

But now and then a ray of hope shot through the 
gloom pervading the White House and Capitol. 
The stirring victory of the Constitution over the 
Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken the 
sting out of Hull's surrender at Detroit, and other 
victories at sea followed, glorious in the annals of 
American naval warfare, though without decisive 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 227 

influence on the outcome of the war. Of much 
greater significance was Perry's victory on Lake 
Erie in September, 1813, which opened the way to 
the invasion of Canada. This brilliant combat 
followed by the Battle of the Thames cheered the 
President in his slow convalescence. Encouraging, 
too, were the exploits of American privateers in 
British waters, but none of these events seemed 
likely to hasten the end of the war. Great 
Britain had already declined the Russian offer 
of mediation. 

Last day but one of the year 1813 a British 
schooner, the Bramble, came into the port of An- 
napolis bearing an important official letter from 
Lord Castlereagh to the Secretary of State. With 
what eager and anxious hands Monroe broke the 
seal of this letter may be readily imagined. It 
might contain assurances of a desire for peace; it 
might indefinitely prolong the war. In truth the 
letter pointed both ways. Castlereagh had de- 
clined to accept the good offices of Russia, but he 
was prepared to begin direct negotiations for peace. 
Meantime the war must go on — with the chances 
favoring British arms, for the Bramble had also 
brought the alarming news of Napoleon's defeat 
on the plains of Leipzig. Now for the first time 



228 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Great Britain could concentrate all her efforts 
upon the campaign in North America. No wonder 
the President accepted Castlereagh's offer with 
alacrity. To the three commissioners sent to 
Russia, he added Henry Clay and Jonathan Russell 
and bade them Godspeed while he nerved himself 
to meet the crucial year of the war. 

Had the President been fully apprized of the 
elaborate plans of the British War Office, his anx- 
ieties would have been multiplied many times. For 
what resources had the Government to meet inva- 
sion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again 
depleted; new loans brought in insufficient funds 
to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack be- 
cause the Government could not compete with the 
larger bounties offered by the States; by sum- 
mer the number of effective regular troops was 
only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this 
slender force, supplemented by State levies, the 
military authorities were asked to repel invasion. 
The Administration had not yet drunk the bitter 
dregs of the cup of humiliation. 

That some part of the invading British forces 
might be detailed to attack the Capital was vague- 
ly divined by the President and his Cabinet; but 
no adequate measures had been taken for the 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 229 

defense of the city when, on a fatal August day, 
the British army marched upon it. The humiliat- 
ing story of the battle of Bladensburg has been told 
elsewhere. The disorganized mob which had been 
hastily assembled to check the advance of the Brit- 
ish was utterly routed almost under the eyes of the 
President, who with feelings not easily described 
found himself obliged to join the troops fleeing 
through the city. No personal humiliation was 
spared the President and his family. Dolly Madi- 
son, never once doubting that the noise of battle 
which reached the White House meant an Amer- 
ican victory, stayed calmly indoors until the rush 
of troops warned her of danger. She and her 
friends were then swept along in the general rout. 
She was forced to leave her personal effects behind, 
but her presence of mind saved one treasure in 
the White House — a large portrait of General 
Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart. That 
priceless portrait and the plate were all that sur- 
vived. The fleeing militiamen had presence of 
mind enough to save a large quantity of the wine 
by drinking it, and what was left, together with 
the dinner on the table, was consumed by Admir- 
al Cockburn and his staff. By nightfall the Wliite 
House, the Treasury, and the War Office were in 



230 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

flames, and only a severe thunderstorm checked 
the conflagration.^ 

Heartsick and utterly weary, the President 
crossed the Potomac at about six o'clock in the 
evening and started westward in a carriage toward 
Montpelier. He had been in the saddle since early 
morning and was nearly spent. To fatigue was 
added humiliation, for he was forced to travel with 
a crowd of embittered fugitives and sleep in a for- 
lorn house by the wayside. Next morning he over- 
took Mrs. Madison at an inn some sixteen miles 
from the Capital. Here they passed another day of 
humiliation, for refugees who had followed the 
same line of flight reviled the President for betray- 
ing them and the city. At midnight, alarmed at a 
report that the British were approaching, the Presi- 
dent fled to another miserable refuge deeper in the 
Virginia woods. This fear of capture was quite 
unfounded, however, for the British troops had 
already evacuated the city and were marching in 
the opposite direction. 

' Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers 
and men, in the capital, the reader should recall the equally in- 
defensible outrages committed by American troops under General 
Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and other 
public buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and burned. 
See Kingsford's History of Canada, viii, pp. 259-61. 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 231 

Two days later the President returned to the 
capital to collect his Cabinet and repair his shat- 
tered Government. He found public sentiment 
hot against the Administration for having failed to 
protect the city. He had even to fear personal 
violence, but he remained " tranquil as usual . . , 
though much distressed by the dreadful event 
which had taken place." He was still more dis- 
tressed, however, by the insistent popular clamor 
for a victim for punishment. All fingers pointed at 
Armstrong as the man responsible for the capture 
of the city. Armstrong offered to resign at once, 
but the President in distress would not hear of 
resignation. He would advise only *'a temporary 
retirement" from the city to placate the inhabit- 
ants. So Armstrong departed, but by the time he 
reached Baltimore he realized the impossibility of 
his situation and sent his resignation to the Presi- 
dent. The victim had been offered up. At his 
own request Monroe was now made Secretary of 
War, though he continued also to discharge the not 
very heavy duties of the State Department. 

It was a disillusioned group of Congressmen who 
gathered in September, 1814, in special session at 
the President's call. Among those who gazed sadly 



232 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

at the charred ruins of the Capitol were Calhoun, 
Cheves, and Grundy, whose voices had been loud 
for war and who had pictured their armies over- 
running the British possessions. Clay was at this 
moment endeavoring to avert a humiliating sur- 
render of American claims at Ghent. To the sting 
of defeated hopes was added physical discomfort. 
The only public building which had escaped the 
general conflagration was the Post and Patent 
Office. In these cramped quarters the two houses 
awaited the President's message. 

A visitor from another planet would have been 
strangely puzzled to make the President's words 
tally with the havoc wrought by the enemy on 
every side. A series of achievements had given 
new luster to the American arms; "the pride of our 
naval arms had been amply supported"; the Amer- 
ican people had ""rushed with enthusiasm to the 
scenes where danger and duty call." Not a syl- 
lable about the disaster at Washington! Not a 
word about the withdrawal of the Connecticut 
militia from national service, and the refusal of the 
Governor of Vermont to call out the militia just at 
the moment when Sir George Prevost began his in- 
vasion of New York; not a word about the general 
suspension of specie payment by all banks outside 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 233 

of New England; not a word about the failure of 
the last loan and the imminent bankruptcy of the 
Government. Only a single sentence betrayed the 
anxiety which was gnawing Madison's heart: "It is 
not to be disguised that the situation of our country 
calls for its greatest efforts." What the situation 
demanded, he left his secretaries to say. 

The new Secretary of War seemed to be the one 
member of the Administration who was prepared 
to grapple with reality and who had the courage of 
his convictions. While Jefferson was warning him 
that it was nonsense to talk about a regular army, 
Monroe told Congress flatly that no reliance could 
be placed in the militia and that a permanent force 
of one hundred thousand men must be raised — 
raised by conscription if necessary. Throwing Vir- 
ginian and Jeffersonian principles to the winds, he 
aflSrmed the constitutional right of Congress to 
draft citizens. The educational value of war must 
have been very great to bring Monroe to this 
conclusion, but Congress had not traveled so 
far. One by one Monroe's alternative plans were 
laid aside; and the country, like a rudderless ship, 
drifted on. 

An insuperable obstacle, indeed, prevented the 
establishment of any efficient national army at this 



234 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

time. Every plan encountered ultimately the inex- 
orable fact that the Treasury was practically emp- 
ty and the credit of the Government gone. Secre- 
tary Campbell's report was a confession of failure 
to sustain public credit. Some seventy-four mil- 
lions would be needed to carry the existing civil and 
military establishments for another year, and of 
this sum, vast indeed in those days, only twenty- 
four millions were in sight. Where the remaining 
fifty millions were to be found, the Secretary could 
not say. With this admission of incompetence 
Campbell resigned from office. On the 9th of 
November his successor, A. J. Dallas, notified 
holders of government securities at Boston that 
the Treasury could not meet its obligations. 

It was at this crisis, when bankruptcy stared the 
Government in the face, that the Legislature of 
Massachusetts appointed delegates to confer with 
delegates from other New England legislatures on 
their common grievances and dangers and to devise 
means of security and defense. The Legislatures of 
Connecticut and Rhode Island responded prompt- 
ly by appointing delegates to meet at Hartford 
on the 15th of December; and the proposed con- 
vention seemed to receive popular indorsement 
in the congressional elections, for with but two 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 235 

exceptions all the Congressmen chosen were Fed- 
eralists. Hot-heads were discussing without any 
attempt at concealment the possibility of recon- 
structing the Federal Union. A new union of 
the good old Thirteen States on terms set by 
New England was believed to be well within the 
bounds of possibility. News-sheets referred en- 
thusiastically to the erection of a new Federal 
edifice which should exclude the Western States. 
Little wonder that the harassed President in dis- 
tant Washington was obsessed with the idea that 
New England was on the verge of secession. 

William Wirt who visited Washington at this 
time has left a vivid picture of ruin and desolation : 

I went to look at the ruins of the President's house. 
The rooms which you saw so richly furnished, ex- 
hibited nothing but unroofed naked walls, cracked, de- 
faced, and blackened with fire. I cannot tell you what 
I felt as I walked amongst them. ... I called on the 
President. He looks miserably shattered and wo- 
begone. In short, he looked heartbroken. His mind 
is full of the New England sedition. He introduced the 
subject, and continued to press it, — painful as it ob- 
viously was to him. I denied the probability, even the 
possibility that the yeomanry of the North could be in- 
duced to place themselves under the power and protec- 
tion of England, and diverted the conversation to an- 
other topic; but he took the first opportunity to return 



236 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

to it, and convinced me that his heart and mind were 
painfully full of the subject. 

What added to the President's misgivings was 
the secrecy in which the members of the Hartford 
Convention shrouded their deliberations. An at- 
mosphere of conspiracy seemed to envelop all their 
proceedings. That the "deliverance of New Eng- 
land" was at hand was loudly proclaimed by the 
Federalist press. A reputable Boston news-sheet 
advised the President to procure a faster horse than 
he had mounted at Bladensburg, if he would escape 
the swift vengeance of New England. 

The report of the Hartford Convention seemed 
hardly commensurate with the fears of the President 
or with the windy boasts of the Federalist press. It 
arraigned the Administration in scathing language, 
to be sure, but it did not advise secession. "The 
multiplied abuses of bad administrations" did not 
yet justify a severance of the Union, especially in a 
time of war. The manifest defects of the Constitu- 
tion were not incurable; yet the infractions of the 
Constitution by the National Government had 
been so deliberate, dangerous, and palpable as to 
put the liberties of the people in jeopardy and to 
constrain the several States to interpose their au- 
thority to protect their citizens. The legislatures 



PRESIDENT MADISON UNDER FIRE 237 

of the several States were advised to adopt meas- 
ures to protect their citizens against such uncon- 
stitutional acts of Congress as conscription and to 
concert some arrangement with the Government 
at Washington, whereby they jointly or separately 
might undertake their own defense, and retain a 
reasonable share of the proceeds of Federal taxa- 
tion for that purpose. To remedy the defects of the 
Constitution seven amendments were proposed, all 
of which had their origin in sectional hostility to 
the ascendancy of Virginia and to the growing 
power of the New West. The last of these pro- 
posals was a shot at Madison and Virginia: "nor 
shall the President be elected from the same State 
two terms in succession." And finally, should 
these applications of the States for permission to 
arm in their own defense be ignored, then and in 
the event that peace should not be concluded, an- 
other convention should be summoned "with such 
powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis 
so momentous may require." 

Massachusetts, under Federalist control, acted 
promptly upon these suggestions. Three com- 
missioners were dispatched to Washington to effect 
the desired arrangements for the defense of the 
State. The progress of these "three ambassadors," 



238 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

as they styled themselves, was followed with curi- 
osity if not with apprehension. In Federalist cir- 
cles there was a general belief that an explosion 
was at hand. A disaster at New Orleans, which was 
now threatened by a British fleet and army, would 
force Madison to resign or to conclude peace. But 
on the road to Washington, the ambassadors 
learned to their surprise that General Andrew 
Jackson had decisively repulsed the British before 
New Orleans, on the 8th of January, and on reach- 
ing the Capital they were met by the news that a 
treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. Their 
cause was not only discredited but made ridiculous. 
They and their mission were forgotten as the ten- 
sion of war times relaxed. The Virginia Dynasty 
was not to end with James Madison. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE PEACEMAKERS 



On a May afternoon in the year 1813, a little three- 
hundred-ton ship, the Neptune, put out from New 
Castle down Delaware Bay. Before she could 
clear the Capes she fell in with a British frigate, 
one of the blockading squadron which was already 
drawing its fatal cordon around the seaboard 
States. The captain of the Neptune boarded the 
frigate and presented his passport, from which it 
appeared that he carried two distinguished pas- 
sengers, Albert Gallatin and James A. Bayard, 
Envoys Extraordinary to Russia. The passport 
duly viseed, the Neptune resumed her course out 
into the open sea, by grace of the British navy. 

One of these envoys watched the coast disap- 
pear in the haze of evening with mingled feelings of 
regret and relief. For twelve weary years Gallatin 
had labored disinterestedly for the land of his 
adoption and now he was recrossing the ocean to 



240 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the home of his ancestors with the taunts of his 
enemies ringing in his ears. Would the Federalists 
never forget that he was a "foreigner"? He re- 
flected with a sad, ironic smile that as a "foreigner 
with a French accent" he would have distinct ad- 
vantages in the world of European diplomacy upon 
which he was entering. He counted many dis- 
tinguished personages among his friends, from 
Madame de Stael to Alexander Baring of the fa- 
mous London banking house. Unlike many native 
Americans he did not need to learn the ways of Eu- 
ropean courts, because he was to the manner born : 
he had no provincial habits which he must slough 
off or conceal. Also he knew himself and the happy 
qualities with which Nature had endowed him — 
patience, philosophic composure, unfailing good 
humor. All these qualities were to be laid under 
heavy requisition in the work ahead of him. 

James Bayard, Gallatin's fellow passenger, had 
never been taunted as a foreigner, because several 
generations had intervened since the first of his 
family had come to New Amsterdam with Peter 
Stuyvesant. Nothing but his name could ever sug- 
gest that he was not of that stock commonly re- 
ferred to as native American. Bayard had gradu- 
ated at Princeton, studied law in Philadelphia, and 



THE PEACEMAKERS Ul 

had just opened a law office in Wilmington when 
he was elected to represent Delaware in Congress. 
As the sole representative of his State in the House 
of Representatives and as a Federalist, he had ex- 
erted a powerful influence in the disputed election 
of 1800, and he was credited with having finally 
made possible the election of Jefferson over Burr. 
Subsequently he was sent to the Senate, where he 
was serving when he was asked by President Madi- 
son to accompany Gallatin on this mission to the 
court of the Czar. Granting that a Federalist must 
be selected, Gallatin could not have found a col- 
league more to his liking, for Bayard was a good 
companion and perhaps the least partisan of the 
Federalist leaders. 

It was midsummer when the Neptune dropped 
anchor in the harbor of Kronstadt. There Gallatin 
and Bayard were joined by John Quincy Adams, 
Minister to Russia, who had been appointed the 
third member of the commission. Here was a pure- 
blooded American by all the accepted canons. 
John Quincy Adams was the son of his father and 
gloried secretly in his lineage: a Puritan of the Puri- 
tans in his outlook upon human life and destiny. 
Something of the rigid quality of rock-bound New 
England entered into his composition. He was a 



l6 



242 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

foe to all compromise — even with himself; to him 
Duty was the stern daughter of the voice of God, 
who admonished him daily and hourly of his obh- 
gations. No character in American public life has 
unbosomed himself so completely as this son of 
Massachusetts in the pages of his diary. There 
are no half tones in the pictures which he has 
drawn of himself, no winsome graces of mind or 
heart, only the rigid outlines of a soul buffeted by 
Destiny. Gallatin — the urbane, cosmopolitan 
Gallatin — must have derived much quiet amuse- 
ment from his association with this robust New 
Englander who took himself so seriously. Two 
natures could not have been more unlike, yet the 
superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made 
their association not only possible but exceeding- 
ly profitable. We may not call their intimacy 
a friendship — Adams had few, if any friend- 
ships; but it contained the essential foundation for 
friendship — complete mutual confidence. 

Adams brought disheartening news to the travel- 
weary passengers on the Neptune: England had de- 
clined the offer of mediation. Yes; he had the 
information from the lips of Count Roumanzoff, 
the Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs. 
Apparently, said Adams with pursed lips, England 



THE PEACEMAKERS 243 

regarded the differences with America as a sort of 
family quarrel in which it would not allow an out- 
side neutral nation to interfere. Roumanzoff, how- 
ever, had renewed the offer of mediation. What 
the motives of the Count were, he would not pre- 
sume to say : Russian diplomacy was unfathomable. 

The American commissioners were in a most em- 
barrassing position. Courtesy required that they 
should make no move until they knew what re- 
sponse the second offer of mediation would evoke. 
The Czar was their only friend in all Europe, so far 
as they knew, and they were none too sure of him. 
They were condemned to anxious inactivity, while 
in middle Europe the fortunes of the Czar rose and 
fell. In August the combined armies of Russia, 
Austria, and Prussia were beaten by the fresh levies 
of Napoleon; in September, the fighting favored the 
allies; in October, Napoleon was brought to bay on 
the plains of Leipzig. Yet the imminent fall of the 
Napoleonic Empire only deepened the anxiety of 
the forlorn American envoys, for it was likely 
to multiply the difficulties of securing reasonable 
terms from his conqueror. 

At the same time with news of the Battle of 
Leipzig came letters from home which informed 
Gallatin that his nomination as envoy had been 



244 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

rejected by the Senate. This was the last straw. 
To remain inactive as an envoy Was bad enough; 
to stay on unaccredited seemed impossible. He 
determined to take advantage of a hint dropped by 
his friend Baring that the British Ministry, while 
declining mediation, was not unwilling to treat 
directly with the American commissioners. He 
would go to London in an unofficial capacity and 
smooth the way to negotiations. But Adams and 
Bayard demurred and persuaded him to defer his 
departure. A month later came assurances that 
Lord Castlereagh had offered to negotiate with the 
Americans either at London or at Gothenburg. 

Late in January, 1814, Gallatin and Bayard set 
off for Amsterdam: the one to bide his chance to 
visit London, the other to await further instruc- 
tions. There they learned that in response to 
Castlereagh's overtures, the President had ap- 
pointed a new commission, on which Gallatin's 
name did not appear. Notwithstanding this disap- 
pointment, Gallatin secured the desired permission 
to visit London through the friendly offices of Alex- 
ander Baring. Hardly had the Americans estab- 
lished themselves in London when word came that 
the two new commissioners, Henry Clay and Jona- 
than Russell, had landed at Gothenburg bearing a 



THE PEACEMAKERS 245 

commission for Gallatin. It seems that Gallatin 
was believed to be on his way home and had there- 
fore been left off the commission; on learning of his 
whereabouts, the President had immediately added 
his name. So it happened that Gallatin stood last 
on the list when every consideration dictated his 
choice as head of the commission. The incident 
illustrates the difficulties that beset communica- 
tion one hundred years ago. Diplomacy was a 
game of chance in which wind and waves often 
turned the score. Here were five American envoys 
duly accredited, one keeping his stern vigil in 
Russia, two on the coast of Sweden, 'and two in 
hostile London. Where would they meet.f^ With 
whom were they to negotiate.'^ 

After vexatious delays Ghent was fixed upon as 
the place where peace negotiations should begin, 
and there the Americans rendezvoused during the 
first week in July. Further delay followed, for in 
spite of the assurances of Lord Castlereagh the 
British representatives did not make their appear- 
ance for a month. Meantime the American com- 
missioners made themselves at home among the hos- 
pitable Flemish townspeople, with whom they be- 
came prime favorites. In the concert halls they were 
always greeted with enthusiasm. The musicians 



246 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

soon discovered that British tunes were not in 
favor and endeavored to learn some American 
airs. Had the Americans no national airs of their 
own, they asked. "Oh, yes!" they were assured. 
"There was Hail Columbia." Would not one of 
the gentlemen be good enough to play or sing it ? An 
embarrassing request, for musical talent was not 
conspicuous in the delegation; but Peter, Gallatin's 
black servant, rose to the occasion. He whistled 
the air; and then one of the attaches scraped out 
the melody on a fiddle, so that the quick-witted or- 
chestra speedily composed I'air national des Amer- 
icains a grand or chestre, and thereafter always played 
it as a counterbalance to God save the King. 

The diversions of Ghent, however, were not 
numerous, and time hung heavy on the hands of 
the Americans while they waited for the British 
commissioners. "We dine together at four," 
Adams records, "and sit usually at table until six. 
We then disperse to our several amusements and 
avocations." Clay preferred cards or billiards and 
the mild excitement of rather high stakes. Gallatin 
and his young son James preferred the theater; 
and all but Adams became intimately acquainted 
with the members of a French troupe of players 
whom Adams describes as the worst he ever saw. 



THE PEACEMAKERS 247 

As for Adams himself, his diversion was a solitary 
walk of two or three hours, and then to bed. 

On the 6th of August the British commissioners 
arrived in Ghent — Admiral Lord Gambier, Henry 
Goulburn, Esq., and Dr. William Adams. They 
were not an impressive trio. Gambier was an el- 
derly man whom a writer in the Morning Chronicle 
described as a man " who slumbered for some time 
as a Junior Lord of Admiralty; who sung psalms, 
said prayers, and assisted in the burning of Copen- 
hagen, for which he was made a lord." Goulburn 
was a young man who had served as an under- 
secretary of state. Adams was a doctor of laws 
who was expected perhaps to assist negotiations 
by his legal lore. Gallatin described them not 
unfairly as *'men who have not made any mark 
. . . puppets of Lords Castlereagh and Liver- 
pool." Perhaps, in justification of this choice of 
representatives, it should be said that the best 
diplomatic talent had been drafted into service at 
Vienna and that the British Ministry expected in 
this smaller conference to keep the threads of 
diplomacy in its own hands. 

The first meeting of the negotiators was amica- 
ble enough. The Americans found their opponents 



248 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

courteous and well-bred; and both sides evinced 
a desire to avoid in word and manner, as Bayard 
put it, "everything of an inflammable nature." 
Throughout this memorable meeting at Ghent, 
indeed, even when difficult situations arose and 
nerves became taut, personal relations continued 
friendly. "We still keep personally upon eating 
and drinking terms with them," Adams wrote 
at a tense moment. Speaking for his superiors 
and his colleagues, Admiral Gambler assured the 
Americans of their earnest desire to end hostili- 
ties on terms honorable to both parties. Adams 
replied that he and his associates reciprocated this 
sentiment. And then, without further formalities, 
Goulburn stated in blunt and business-like fashion 
the matters on which they had been instructed: 
impressment, fisheries, boundaries, the pacification 
of the Indians, and the demarkation of an Indian 
territory. The last was to be regarded as a sine 
qua non for the conclusion of any treaty. Would 
the Americans be good enough to state the purport 
of their instructions? 

The American commissioners seem to have been 
startled out of their composure by this sine qua 
non. They had no instructions on this latter point 
nor on the fisheries; they could only ask for a more 



THE PEACEMAKERS 249 

specific statement. What had His Majesty's Gov- 
ernment in mind when it referred to an Indian ter- 
ritory? With evident reluctance the British com- 
missioners admitted that the proposed Indian 
territory was to serve as a buffer state between the 
United States and Canada. Pressed for more de- 
tails, they intimated that this area thus neutralized 
might include the entire Northwest. 

A second conference only served to show the 
want of any common basis for negotiation. The 
Americans had come to Ghent to settle two out- 
standing problems — blockades and indemnities for 
attacks on neutral commerce — and to insist on the 
abandonment of impressments as a sine qua non. 
Both commissions then agreed to appeal to their 
respective Governments for further instructions. 
Within a week. Lord Castlereagh sent precise in- 
structions which confirmed the worst fears of the 
Americans. The Indian boundary line was to fol- 
low the line of the Treaty of Greenville and beyond 
it neither nation was to acquire land. The United 
States was asked, in short, to set apart for the In- 
dians in perpetuity an area which comprised the 
present States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, 
four-fifths of Indiana, and a third of Ohio. But, 
remonstrated Gallatin, this area included States 



250 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

and Territories settled by more than a hundred 
thousand American citizens. What was to be done 
with them? "They must look after themselves," 
was the blunt answer. 

In comparison with this astounding proposal. 
Lord Castlereagh's further suggestion of a "recti- 
fication" of the frontier by the cession of Fort Niag- 
ara and Sackett's Harbor and by the exclusion of 
the Americans from the Lakes, seemed of little 
importance. The purpose of His Majesty's Gov- 
ernment, the commissioners hastened to add, was 
not aggrandizement but the protection of the 
North American provinces. In view of the avowed 
aim of the United States to conquer Canada, the 
control of the Lakes must rest with Great Britain. 
Indeed, taking the weakness of Canada into ac- 
count, His Majesty's Government might have rea- 
sonably demanded the cession of the lands ad- 
jacent to the Lakes; and should these moderate 
terms not be accepted. His Majesty's Govern- 
ment would feel itself at liberty to enlarge its 
demands, if the war continued to favor British 
arms. The American commissioners asked if these 
proposals relating to the control of the Lakes 
were also a sine qua non. "We have given you 
one sine qua non already," was the reply, "and 



THE PEACEMAKERS 251 

we should suppose one sine qua non at a time 
was enough." 

The Americans returned to their hotel of one 
mind: they could view the proposals just made in 
no other light than as a deliberate attempt to dis- 
member the United States. They could differ only 
as to the form in which they should couch their 
positive rejection. As titular head of the commis- 
sion, Adams set promptly to work upon a draft of 
an answer which he soon set before his colleagues. 
At once all appearance of unanimity vanished. To 
the enemy they could present a united front; in the 
privacy of their apartment, they were five head- 
strong men. They promptly fell upon Adams's 
draft tooth and nail. Adams described the scene 
with pardonable resentment : 

Mr. Gallatin is for striking out any expression that 
may be offensive to the feelings of the adverse party. 
Mr. Clay is displeased with figurative language, which 
he thinks improper for a state paper. Mr. Russell, 
agreeing in the objections of the two other gentlemen, 
will be further for amending the construction of every 
sentence; and Mr. Bayard, even when agreeing to say 
precisely the same thing, chooses to say it only in his 
own language. 

Sharp encounters took place between Adams and 
Clay. "You dare not," shouted Clay in a passion 



252 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

on one occasion, "you cannot, you shall not insinu- 
ate that there has been a cabal of three members 
against you!" "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Gal- 
latin would expostulate with a twinkle in his eye, 
"We must remain united or we will fail." It was 
his good temper and tact that saved this and many 
similar situations. When Bayard had essayed a 
draft of his own and had failed to win support, it 
was Gallatin who took up Adams's draft and put 
it into acceptable form. On the third day, after 
hours of "sifting, erasing, patching, and amending, 
until we were all wearied, though none of us satis- 
fied," Gallatin's revision was accepted. From 
this moment, Gallatin's virtual leadership was 
unquestioned. 

The American note of the 24th of August was a 
vigorous but even-tempered protest against the 
British demands as contrary to precedent and dis- 
honorable to the United States. The American 
States would never consent "to abandon territory 
and a portion of their citizens, to admit a for- 
eign interference in their domestic concerns, and 
to cease to exercise their natural rights on their 
own shores and in their own waters." "A treaty 
concluded on such terms would be but an armis- 
tice." But after the note had been prepared and 



THE PEACEMAKERS 253 

dispatched, profound discouragement reigned in 
the American hotel. Even Gallatin, usually hopeful 
and philosophically serene, grew despondent. * ' Our 
negotiations may be considered at an end," he 
wrote to Monroe; "Great Britain wants war in 
order to cripple us. She wants aggrandizement at 
our expense. ... I do not expect to be longer 
than three weeks in Em-ope." The commissioners 
notified their landlord that they would give up their 
quarters on the 1st of October; yet they lingered 
on week after week, waiting for the word v/hich 
would close negotiations and send them home. 

Meantime the British Ministry was quite as 
little pleased at the prospect. It would not do to 
let the impression go abroad that Great Britain 
was prepared to continue the war for territorial 
gains. If a rupture of the negotiations must 
come, Lord Castlereagh preferred to let the Ameri- 
cans shoulder the responsibility. He therefore 
instructed Gambler not to insist on the independ- 
ent Indian territory and the control of the Lakes, 
These points were no longer to be "ultimata" 
but only matters for discussion. The British 
commissioners were to insist, however, on articles 
providing for the pacification of the Indians. 

Should the Americans yield this sine qua non, 



254 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

now that the first had been withdrawn? Adams 
thought not, decidedly not; he would rather break 
ofiF negotiations than admit the right of Great Bri- 
tain to interfere with the Indians dwelling within 
the limits of the United States. Gallatin remarked 
that after all it was a very small point to insist on, 
when a slight concession would win much more im- 
portant points. "Then, said I [Adams], with a 
movement of impatience and an angry tone, it is a 
good point to admit the British as the sovereigns 
and protectors of our Indians? Gallatin's face 
brightened, and he said in a tone of perfect good- 
humor, 'That's a non-sequitur.' This turned the 
edge of the argument into jocularity. I laughed, 
and insisted that it was a sequitur, and the con- 
versation easily changed to another point." Galla- 
tin had his way with the rest of the commission 
and drafted the note of the 26th of September, 
which, while refusing to recognize the Indians as 
sovereign nations in the treaty, proposed a stipula- 
tion that would leave them in possession of their 
former lands and rights. This solution of a per- 
plexing problem was finally accepted after another 
exchange of notes and another earnest discussion 
at the American hotel, where Gallatin again 
poured oil on the troubled waters. Concession 



THE PEACEMAKERS 255 

begat concession. New instructions from Presi- 
dent Madison now permitted the commissioners 
to drop the demand for the abolition of impress- 
ments and blockades; and, with these difficult 
matters swept away, the path to peace was much 
easier to travel. 

Such was the outlook for peace when news 
reached Ghent of the humiliating rout at Bladens- 
burg. The British newspapers were full of jubi- 
lant comments; the five crestfallen American en- 
voys took what cold comfort they could out of the 
very general condemnation of the burning of the 
Capitol. Then, on the heels of this intelligence, 
came rumors that the British invasion of New York 
had failed and that Prevost's army was in full re- 
treat to Canada. The Americans could hardly 
grasp the full significance of this British reversal: 
it was too good to be true. But true it was, and 
their spirits rebounded. 

It was at this juncture that the British commis- 
sioners presented a note, on the 21st of October, 
which for the first time went to the heart of the 
negotiations. War had been waged ; territory had 
been overrun; conquests had been made — not the 
anticipated conquests on either side, to be sure, 
but conquests nevertheless. These were the plain 



256 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

facts. Now the practical question was this: Was 
the treaty to be drafted on the basis of the existing 
state of possession or on the basis of the status be- 
fore the war? The British note stated their case in 
plain unvarnished fashion; it insisted on the status 
uti possidetis — the possession of territory won 
by arms. 

In the minds of the Americans, buoyed up by 
the victory at Plattsburg, there was not the shadow 
of doubt as to what their answer should be; they 
declined for an instant to consider any other basis 
for peace than the restoration of gains on both 
sides. Their note was prompt, emphatic, even 
blunt, and it nearly shattered the nerves of the 
gentlemen in Downing Street. Had these stiff- 
necked Yankees no sense? Could they not per- 
ceive the studied moderation of the terms proposed 
— an island or two and a small strip of Maine — 
when half of Maine and the south bank of the St. 
Lawrence from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor 
might have been demanded as the price of peace? 

The prospect of another year of war simply to 
secure a frontier which nine out of ten Englishmen 
could not have identified was most disquieting, 
especially in view of the prodigious cost of military 
operations in North America. The Ministry was 



THE PEACEMAKERS 257 

both hot and cold. At one moment it favored con- 
tinued war; at another it shrank from the conse- 
quences; and in the end it confessed its own want 
of decision by appeahng to the Duke of WelHng- 
ton and trying to shift the responsibihty to his 
broad shoulders. Would the Duke take command 
of the forces in Canada? He should be invested 
with full diplomatic and military powers to bring 
the war to an honorable conclusion. 

The reply of the Iron Duke gave the Ministry 
another shock. He would go to America, but he 
did not promise himself much success there, and 
he was reluctant to leave Europe at this critical 
time. To speak frankly, he had no high opinion 
of the diplomatic game which the Ministry was 
playing at Ghent. "I confess," said he, "that I 
think you have no right from the state of the war 
to demand any concession from America. . . . 
You have not been able to carry it into the enemy's 
territory, notwithstanding your military success, 
and now undoubted military superiority, and have 
not even cleared your own territory on the point 
of attack. You cannot on any principle of equality 
in negotiation claim a cession of territory excepting 
in exchange for other advantages which you have 
in your power. . . . Then if this reasoning be 



258 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can 
get no territory; indeed, the state of your mihtary 
operations, however creditable, does not entitle you 
to demand any." 

As Lord Liverpool perused this dispatch, the 
will to conquer oozed away. "I think we have de- 
termined," he wrote a few days later to Castle- 
reagh, "if all other points can be satisfactorily 
settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of 
obtaining or securing any acquisition of territory." 
He set forth his reasons for this decision succinctly : 
the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at 
Vienna, the alarming condition of France, the de- 
plorable financial outlook in England. But Lord 
Liverpool omitted to mention a still more potent 
factor in his calculations — the growing impatience 
of the country. The American war had ceased to 
be popular; it had become the graveyard of mili- 
tary reputations; it promised no glory to either 
sailor or soldier. Now that the correspondence of 
the negotiators at Ghent was made public, the 
reading public might very easily draw the conclu- 
sion that the Ministry was prolonging the war by 
setting up pretensions which it could not sustain. 
No Ministry could afford to continue a war out of 
mere stubbornness. 



THE PEACEMAKERS 259 

Meantime, wholly in the dark as to the forces 
which were working in their favor, the American 
commissioners set to work upon a draft of a treaty 
which should be their answer to the British offer of 
peace on the basis of uti possidetis. Almost at 
once dissensions occurred. Protracted negotiations 
and enforced idleness had set their nerves on 
edge, and old personal and sectional differences 
appeared. The two matters which caused most 
trouble were the fisheries and the navigation of 
the Mississippi. Adams could not forget how stub- 
bornly his father had fought for that article in the 
treaty of 1783 which had conceded to New England 
fishermen, as a natural right, freedom to fish in Brit- 
ish waters. To a certain extent this concession had 
been offset by yielding to the British the right of 
navigation of the Mississippi, but the latter right 
seemed unimportant in the days when the Alle- 
ghanies marked the limit of western settlement. 
In the quarter of a century which had elapsed, 
however, the West had come into its own. It was 
now a powerful section with an intensely alert con- 
sciousness of its rights and wrongs; and among its 
rights it counted the exclusive control of the Father 
of Waters. Feeling himself as much the champion 
of Western interests as Adams did of New England 



260 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

fisheries, Clay refused indignantly to consent to a 
renewal of the treaty pro\asions of 1783. But when 
the matter came to a vote, he found himself with 
Russell in a minority. Very reluctantly he then 
agreed to Gallatin's proposal, to insert in a note, 
rather than in the draft itself, a paragraph to the 
effect that the commissioners were not instructed 
to discuss the rights hitherto enjoyed in the fisher- 
ies, since no further stipulation was deemed neces- 
sary to entitle them to rights which were recognized 
by the treaty of 1783. 

When the British reply to the American project 
was read, Adams noted wnth quiet satisfaction that 
the reservation as to the fisheries was passed over in 
silence — silence, he thought, gave consent — but 
Clay flew into a towering passion when he learned 
that the old right of na\'igating the Mississippi was 
reasserted. Adams was prepared to accept the 
British proposals; Clay refused point blank; and 
Gallatin sided this time with Clay. Could a com- 
promise be effected between these stubborn repre- 
sentatives of East and West? Gallatin tried once 
more. Why not accept the British right of naviga- 
tion — surely an unimportant point after all — and 
ask for an express affirmation of fishery rights? 
Clay replied hotly that if they were going to 



THE PEACEMAKERS 261 

sacrifice the West to Massachusetts, he would not 
sign the treaty. With infinite patience Gallatin 
continued to play the role of peacemaker and finally 
brought both these self-willed men to agree to offer 
a renewal of both rights. 

Instead of accepting this eminently fair adjust- 
ment, the British representatives proposed that the 
two disputed rights be left to future negotiation. 
The suggestion caused another explosion in the 
ranks of the Americans. Adams would not admit 
even by implication that the rights for which his 
sire fought could be forfeited by war and become 
the subject of negotiation. But all save Adams 
were ready to yield. Again Gallatin came to the 
rescue. He penned a note rejecting the British offer, 
because it seemed to imply the abandonment of a 
right; but in turn he offered to omit in the treaty 
all reference to the fisheries and the Mississippi or 
to include a general reference to further negotia- 
tion of all matters still in dispute, in such a way 
as not to relinquish any rights. To this solution of 
the diflSculty all agreed, though Adams was still 
torn by doubts and Clay believed that the treaty 
was bound to be "damned bad" anyway. 

An anxious week of waiting followed. On the 
22d of December came the British reply — a 



262 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

grudging acceptance of Gallatin's first proposal to 
omit all reference to the fisheries and the Missis- 
sippi. Two days later the treaty was signed in the 
refectory of the Carthusian monastery where the 
British commissioners were quartered. Let the 
tired seventeen-year-old boy who had been his 
father's scribe through these long weary months 
describe the events of Christmas Day, 1814. " The 
British delegates very civilly asked us to dinner," 
wrote James Gallatin in his diary. "The roast 
beef and plum pudding was from England, and 
everybody drank everybody else's health. The 
band played first God Save the King, to the toast 
of the King, and Yankee Doodle, to the toast of the 
President. Congratulations on all sides and a gen- 
eral atmosphere of serenity; it was a scene to be 
remembered. God grant there may be always 
peace between the two nations. I never saw father 
so cheerful; he was in high spirits, and his witty 
conversation was much appreciated."^ 

Peace ! That was the outstanding achievement 
of the American commissioners at Ghent. Meas- 
ured by the purposes of the war-hawks of 1812, 
measured by the more temperate purposes of 

^A Great Peace Maker: The Dairy of James Gallatin (1914), 
p. 36. 



THE PEACEMAKERS 263 

President Madison, the Treaty of Ghent was a 
confession of national weakness and humiHating 
failure. Clay, whose voice had been loudest for war 
and whose kindling fancy had pictured American 
armies dictating terms of surrender at Quebec, set 
his signature to a document which redressed not a 
single grievance and added not a foot of territory 
to the United States. Adams, who had denounced 
Great Britain for the crime of "man-stealing," ac- 
cepted a treaty of peace which contained not a 
syllable about impressment. President Madison, 
who had reluctantly accepted war as the last 
means of escape from the blockade of American 
ports and the ruin of neutral trade, recommended 
the ratification of a convention which did not so 
much as mention maritime questions and the 
rights of neutrals. 

Peace — and nothing more ? Much more, indeed, 
than appears in rubrics on parchment. The Treaty 
of Ghent must be interpreted in the light of more 
than a hundred years of peace between the two 
great branches of the English-speaking race. More 
conscious of their differences than anything else, 
no doubt, these eight peacemakers at Ghent never- 
theless spoke a common tongue and shared a com- 
mon English trait: they laid firm hold on realities. 



264 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Like practical men they faced the year 1815 and 
not 1812. In a pacified Europe rid of the Corsican, 
questions of maritime practice seemed dead issues. 
Let the dead past bury its dead ! To remove pos- 
sible causes of future controversy seemed wiser 
statesmanship than to rake over the embers of 
quarrels which might never be rekindled. So it was 
that in prosaic articles they provided for three com- 
missions to arbitrate boundary controversies at 
critical points in the far-flung frontier between 
Canada and the United Stales, and thus laid the 
foundations of an international accord which has 
survived a hundred years. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SPANISH DERELICTS IN THE NEW WORLD 

It fell to the last, and perhaps least talented, Presi- 
dent of the Virginia Dynasty to consummate the 
work of Jefferson and Madison by a final settle- 
ment with Spain which left the United States in 
possession of the Floridas. In the diplomatic ser- 
vice James Monroe had exhibited none of those 
qualities which warranted the expectation that he 
would succeed where his predecessors had failed. 
On his missions to England and Spain, indeed, he 
had been singularly inept, but he had learned much 
in the rude school of experience, and he now brought 
to his new duties discretion, sobriety, and poise. 
He was what the common people held him to be — 
a faithful public servant, deeply and sincerely re- 
publican, earnestly desirous to serve the country 
which he loved. 

The circumstances of Monroe's election pledged 
him to a truly national policy. He had received 

265 



266 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the electoral votes of all but three States. ' He was 
now President of an undivided country, not merely 
a Virginian fortuitously elevated to the chief magis- 
tracy and regarded as alien in sympathy to the 
North and East. Any doubts on this point were 
dispelled by the popular demonstrations which 
greeted him on his tour through Federalist strong- 
holds in the Northeast. "I have seen enough," 
he wrote in grateful recollection, "to satisfy me 
that the great mass of our fellow-citizens in the 
Eastern States are as firmly attached to the union 
and republican government as I have always be- 
lieved or could desire them to be." The news- 
sheets which followed his progress from day to day 
coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which 
has passed current ever since as a characterization 
of his administration. 

It was in this admirable temper and with this 
broad national outlook that Monroe chose his ad- 
visers and heads of departments. He was well 
aware of the common belief that his predecessors 
had appointed Virginians to the Secretaryship of 
State in order to prepare the way for their suc- 
cession to the Presidency. He was determined, 

' Monroe received,183 electoral votes and Rufus King, 34 — the 
votes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. 



SPANISH DERELICTS 267 

therefore, to avert the suspicion of sectional bias by 
selecting some one from the Eastern States, rather 
than from the South or from the West, hitherto so 
closely allied to the South. His choice fell upon 
John Quincy Adams, "who by his age, long expe- 
rience in our foreign affairs, and adoption into the 
Republican party," he assured Jefferson, "seems 
to have superior pretentions." It was an excellent 
appointment from every point of view but one. 
Monroe had overlooked — and the circumstance 
did him infinite credit — the exigencies of politics 
and passed over an individual whose vaulting am- 
bition had already made him an aspirant to the 
Presidency. Henry Clay was grievously disap- 
pointed and henceforward sulked in his tent, refus- 
ing the Secretaryship of War which the President 
tendered. Eventually the brilliant young John C. 
Calhoun took this post. This South Carolinian 
was in the prime of life, full of fire and dash, ar- 
dently patriotic, and nationally-minded to an un- 
usual degree. Of William H. Crawford of Georgia, 
who retained the Secretaryship of the Treasury, 
little need be said except that he also was a presi- 
dential aspirant who saw things always from the 
angle of political expediency. Benjamin W. Crown- 
inshield as Secretary of the Navy and William Wirt 



268 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

as Attorney-General completed the circle of the 
President's intimate advisers. 

The new Secretary of State had not been in office 
many weeks before he received a morning call from 
Don Luis de Onis, the Spanish Minister, who was 
laboring under ill-disguised excitement. It ap- 
peared that his house in Washington had been re- 
peatedly "insulted" of late — windows broken, 
lamps in front of the house smashed, and one night 
a dead fowl tied to his bell-rope. This last piece of 
vandalism had been too much for his equanimity. 
He held it a gross insult to his sovereign and the 
Spanish monarchy, importing that they were of no 
more consequence than a dead old hen! Adams, 
though considerably amused, endeavored to smooth 
the ruffled pride of the chevalier by suggesting that 
these were probably only the tricks of some mis- 
chievous boys; but De Onis was not easily appeased. 
Indeed, as Adams was himself soon to learn, the 
American public did regard the Spanish monarchy 
as a dead old hen, and took no pains to disguise its 
contempt. Adams had yet to learn the long train 
of circumstances which made Spanish relations 
the most delicate and difficult of all the diplomatic 
problems in his office. 

With his wonted industry, Adams soon made 



SPANISH DERELICTS 269 

himself master of the facts relating to Spanish 
diplomacy. For the moment interest centered on 
East Florida. Carefully unraveling the tangled 
skein of events, Adams followed the thread which 
led back to President Madison's secret message to 
Congress of January 3, 1811, which was indeed one 
of the landmarks in American policy. Madison 
had recommended a declaration "that the United 
States could not see without serious inquietude any 
part of a neighboring territory [like East Florida] 
in which they have in different respects so deep and 
so just a concern pass from the hands of Spam into 
those of any other foreign power." To prevent 
the possible subversion of Spanish authority in 
East Florida and the occupation of the province 
by a foreign power — Great Britain was, of course, 
the power the President had in mind — he had 
urged Congress to authorize him to take tempo- 
rary possession "in piursuance of arrangements 
which may be desired by the Spanish authorities." 
Congress had responded with alacrity and em- 
powered the President to occupy East Florida 
in case the local authorities should consent or 
a foreign power should attempt to occupy it. 
With equal dispatch the President had sent two 
agents, General George Matthews and Colonel 



270 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 
John McKee, on one of the strangest missions in 
the border history of the United States. 

East Florida — Adams found, pm*suing his in- 
quiries into the archives of the department — in- 
cluded the two important ports of entry, Pensacola 
on the Gulf and Fernandina on Amelia Island, at 
the mouth of the St. Mary's River. The island had 
long been a notorious resort for smugglers. Hither 
had come British and American vessels with car- 
goes of merchandise and slaves, which found their 
way in mysterious fashion to consignees within the 
States. A Spanish garrison of ten men was the sole 
custodian of law and order on the island. Up and 
down the river was scattered a lawless population 
of freebooters, who were equally ready to raid a 
border plantation or to raise the Jolly Roger on 
some piratical cruise. To this No Man's Land — 
fertile recruiting ground for all manner of filibuster- 
ing expeditions — General Matthews and Colonel 
McKee had betaken themselves in the spring of 
1811, bearing some explicit instructions from Presi- 
dent Madison but also some very pronounced con- 
victions as to what they were expected to accom- 
plish. Matthews, at least, understood that the 
President wished a revolution after the West 
Florida model. He assured the Administration — 



SPANISH DERELICTS 271 

Adams read the precious missive in the files of his 
oflBce — that he could do the trick. Only let the 
Government consign two hundred stand of arms 
and fifty horsemen's swords to the commander at 
St. Mary's, and he would guarantee to put the rev- 
olution through without committing the United 
States in any way. 

The melodrama had been staged for the follow- 
ing spring (1812). Some two hundred "patriots" 
recruited from the border people gathered near St. 
Mary's with souls yearning for freedom; and while 
American gunboats took a menacing position, this 
force of insurgents had landed on Amelia Island 
and summoned the Spanish commandant to surren- 
der. Not willing to spoil the scene by vulgar resist- 
ance, the commandant capitulated and marched 
out his garrison, ten strong, with all the honors of 
war. The Spanish flag had been hauled down to 
give place to the flag of the insurgents, bearing the 
inspiring motto Salus populi — suprema lex. Then 
General Matthews with a squad of regular United 
States troops had crossed the river and taken pos- 
session. Only the benediction of the Government 
at Washington was lacking to make the success 
of his mission complete; but to the general's 
consternation no approving message came, only 



272 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

a peremptory dispatch disavowing his acts and 

revoking his commission. 

As Adams reviewed these events, he could see no 
other alternative for the Government to have pur- 
sued at this moment when war with Great Britain 
was impending. It would have been the height of 
folly to break openly with Spain. The Administra- 
tion had indeed instructed its new agent, Governor 
Mitchell of Georgia, to restore the island to the 
Spanish commandant and to withdraw his troops, if 
he could do so without sacrificing the insurgents to 
the vengeance of the Spaniards. But the forces set 
in motion by Matthews were not so easily controlled 
from Washington. Once having resolved to liber- 
ate East Florida, the patriots were not disposed 
to retire at the nod of the Secretary of State. The 
Spanish commandant was equally obdurate. He 
would make no promise to spare the insurgents. 
The Legislature of Georgia, too, had a mind of its 
own. It resolved that the occupation of East Flor- 
ida was essential to the safety of the State, whether 
Congress approved or no; and the Governor, swept 
along in the current of popular feeling, summoned 
troops from Savannah to hold the province. Just 
at this moment had come the news of war with 
Great Britain; and Governor, State militia, and 



SPANISH DERELICTS 273 

patriots had combined in an effort to prevent East 
Florida from becoming enemy's territory. 

Military considerations had also swept the Ad- 
ministration along the same hazardous course. The 
occupation of the Floridas seemed imperative. The 
President sought authorization from Congress to 
occupy and govern both the Floridas until the 
vexed question of title could be settled by negotia- 
tion. Only a part of this programme had carried, 
for, while Congress was prepared to approve the 
military occupation of West Florida to the Perdido 
River, beyond that it would not go; and so with 
great reluctance the President had ordered the 
troops to withdraw from Amelia Island. In the 
spring of the same year (1813) General Wilkinson 
had occupied West Florida — the only permanent 
conquest of the war and that, oddly enough, the 
conquest of a territory owned and held by a power 
with which the United States was not at war. 

Abandoned by the American troops, Amelia Is- 
land had become a rendezvous for outlaws from 
every part of the Americas. Just about the time 
that Adams was crossing the ocean to take up his 
duties at the State Department, one of these buc- 
caneers by the name of Gregor MacGregor de- 
scended upon the island as "Brigadier General of 



274 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the Armies of the United Provinces of New Gran- 
ada and Venezuela, and General-in-chief of that 
destined to emancipate the provinces of both Flor- 
idas, under the commission of the Supreme Govern- 
ment of Mexico and South America." This pirate 
was soon succeeded by General Aury, who had en- 
joyed a wild career among the buccaneers of Gal- 
veston Bay, where he had posed as military gover- 
nor under the Republic of Mexico. East Florida in 
the hands of such desperadoes was a menace to the 
American border. 

Approaching the problem of East Florida with- 
out any of the prepossessions of those who had been 
dealing with Spanish envoys for a score of years, 
the new Secretary of State was prepared to move 
directly to his goal without any too great considera- 
tion for the feelings of others. His examination of 
the facts led him to a clean-cut decision : this nest of 
pirates must be broken up at once. His energy car- 
ried President and Cabinet along with him. It was 
decided to send troops and ships to the St. Mary's 
and if necessary to invest Fernandina. This dem- 
onstration of force sufficed; General Aury depart- 
ed to conquer new worlds, and Amelia Island was 
occupied for the second time without bloodshed. 

But now, having grasped the nettle firmly, what 



SPANISH DERELICTS 275 

was the Administration to do with it? De Onis 
promptly registered his protest; the opposition in 
Congress seized upon the incident to worry the 
President; many of the President's friends thought 
that he had been precipitate. Monroe, indeed, would 
have been glad to withdraw the troops now that 
they had effected their object, but Adams was for 
holding the island in order to force Spain to terms. 
With a frankness which lacerated the feelings of 
De Onis, Adams insisted that the United States 
had acted strictly on the defensive. The occupa- 
tion of Amelia Island was not an act of aggression 
but a necessary measure for the protection of com- 
merce — American commerce, the commerce of 
other nations, the commerce of Spain itself. Now 
why not put an end to all friction by ceding the 
Floridas to the United States .^^ What would Spain 
take for all her possessions east of the Mississippi, 
Adams asked. De Onis declined to say. Well, then, 
Adams pursued, suppose the United States should 
withdraw from Amelia Island, would Spain guar- 
antee that it should not be occupied again by free- 
booters? No : De Onis could give no such guaran- 
tee, but he would v/rite to the Governor of Havana 
to ascertain if he would send an adequate garrison 
to Fernandina. 



276 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Adams rep>orted this significant conversation to 
the President, who was visibly shaken by the con- 
flict of opinions within his political household and 
not a little alarmed at the possibility of war with 
Spain. The Secretary of State was coolly taking 
the measm-e of his chief. "There is a slowness, 
want of decision, and a spirit of procrastination in 
the President," he confided to his diary. He did 
not add, but the thought was in his mind, that he 
could sway this President, mold him to his heart's 
desire. In this first trial of strength the hardier 
personality won : Monroe sent a message to Con- 
gress, on January 13, 1818, announcing his inten- 
tion to hold East Florida for the present, and the 
arguments which he used to justify this bold course 
were precisely those of his Secretary of State. 

When Adams suggested that Spain might put an 
end to all her worries by ceding the Floridas, he was 
only renewing an offer that Mom-oe had made while 
he was still Secretary of State. De Onis had then 
declared that Spain would never cede territory 
east of the Mississippi unless the United States 
would relinquish its claims west of that river. Now, 
to the new Secretary, De Onis intimated that he was 
ready to be less exacting. He would be willing to 
run the line farther west and allow the United 



SPANISH DERELICTS 277 

States a large part of what is now the State of 
Louisiana. Adams made no reply to this tentative 
proposal but bided his time; and time played into 
his hands in unexpected ways. 

To the Secretary's office, one day in June, 1818, 
came a letter from De Onis which was a veritable 
firebrand. De Onis, who was not unnaturally dis- 
posed to believe the worst of Americans on the 
border, had heard that General Andrew Jackson in 
pursuit of the Seminole Indians had crossed into 
Florida and captured Pensacola and St. Mark's. 
He demanded to be informed "in a positive, dis- 
tinct and explicit manner just what had occurred"; 
and then, outraged by confirmatory reports and 
without waiting for Adams's reply, he wrote an- 
other angry letter, insisting upon the restitution 
of the captured forts and the punishment of the 
American general. Worse tidings followed. Bagot, 
the British Minister, had heard that Jackson had 
seized and executed two British subjects on Span- 
ish soil. Would the Secretary of State inform him 
whether General Jackson had been authorized to 
take Pensacola, and would the Secretary furnish 
him with copies of the reports of the courts-martial 
which had condemned these two subjects of His 



278 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

Majesty? Adams could only reply that he lacked 
official information. 

By the second week in July, dispatches from 
General Jackson confirmed the worst insinuations 
and accusations of De Onis and Bagot. President 
Monroe was painfully embarrassed. Prompt dis- 
avowal of the general's conduct seemed the only 
way to avert war; but to disavow the acts of this 
popular idol, the victor of New Orleans, was no 
light matter. He sought the advice of his Cabinet 
and was hardly less embarrassed to find all but one 
convinced that "Old Hickory" had acted contrary 
to instructions and had committed acts of hostility 
against Spain. A week of anxious Cabinet sessions 
followed, in which only one voice was raised in de- 
fense of the invasion of Florida. All but Adams 
feared war, a war which the opposition would sure- 
ly brand as incited by the President without the 
consent of Congress. No administration could 
carry on a war begun in violation of the Constitu- 
tion, said Calhoun. But, argued Adams, the Presi- 
dent may authorize defensive acts of hostility. 
Jackson had been authorized to cross the frontier, 
if necessary, in pursuit of the Indians, and all the 
ensuing deplorable incidents had followed as a 
necessary consequence of Indian warfare. 



SPANISH DERELICTS 279 

The conclusions of the Cabinet were summed up 
by Adams in a reply to De Onis, on the 23d of July, 
which must have greatly astonished that diligent 
defender of Spanish honor. Opening the letter to 
read, as he confidently expected, a disavowal and an 
offer of reparation, he found the responsibility for 
the recent unpleasant incidents fastened upon his 
own country. He was reminded that by the treaty 
of 1795 both Governments had contracted to re- 
strain the Indians within their respective borders, 
so that neither should suffer from hostile raids, and 
that the Governor of Pensacola, when called upon 
to break up a stronghold of Indians and fugitive 
slaves, had acknowledged his obligation but had 
pleaded his inability to carry out the covenant. 
Then, and then only, had General Jackson been 
authorized to cross the border and to put an end to 
outrages which the Spanish authorities lacked the 
power to prevent. General Jackson had taken pos- 
session of the Spanish forts on his own responsi- 
bility when he became convinced of the duplicity 
of the commandant, who, indeed, had made him- 
self "a partner and accomplice of the hostile In- 
dians and of their foreign instigators." Such con- 
duct on the part of His Majesty's oflScer justified 
the President in calling for his punishment. But, 



280 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

in the meantime, the President was prepared to 
restore Pensacola, and also St. Mark's, whenever 
His Majesty should send a force sufficiently strong 
to hold the Indians under control. 

Nor did the Secretary of State moderate his tone 
or abate his demands when Pizarro, the Spanish 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, threatened to sus- 
pend negotiations with the United States until it 
should give satisfaction for this "shameful invasion 
of His Majesty's territory" and for these "acts of 
barbarity glossed over with the forms of justice." 
In a dispatch to the American Minister at Madrid, 
Adams vigorously defended Jackson's conduct 
from beginning to end. The time had come, said 
he, when "Spain must immediately make her elec- 
tion either to place a force in Florida adequate at 
once to the protection of her territory and to the 
fulfilment of her engagements or cede to the United 
States a province of which she retains nothing but 
the nominal possession, but which is in fact a dere- 
lict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civil- 
ized or savage, of the United States and serving no 
other earthly purpose, than as a post of annoyance 
to them." 

This affront to Spanish pride might have ended 
abruptly a chapter in Spanish-American diplomacy 



SPANISH DERELICTS 281 

but for the friendly offices of Hyde de Neuville, the 
French Minister at Washington, whose Govern- 
ment could not view without alarm the possibili- 
ty of a rupture between the two countries. It 
was Neuville who labored through the summer 
months of this year, first with Adams, then with 
De Onis, tempering the demands of the one and 
placating the pride of the other, but never allow- 
ing intercourse to drop. Adams was right, and 
both Neuville and De Onis knew it; the only 
way to settle outstanding differences was to cede 
these Spanish derelicts in the New World to the 
United States. 

To bring and keep together these two antitheti- 
cal personalities, representatives of two opposing 
political systems, was no small achievement. What 
De Onis thought of his stubborn opponent may be 
surmised; what the American thought of the Span- 
iard need not be left lo conjecture. In the pages 
of his diary Adams painted the portrait of his ad- 
versary as he saw him — "cold, calculating, wily, 
always commanding his temper, proud because he 
is a Spaniard but supple and cunning, accommo- 
dating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the 
degree of endurance of his opponents, bold and 
overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is 



282 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly 
it is proved to be unfounded." 

The history of the negotiations running through 
the fall and winter is a succession of propositions 
and counter-propositions, made formally by the 
chief participants or tentatively and informally 
through Neuville. The western boundary of the 
Louisiana purchase was the chief obstacle to agree- 
ment. Each sparred for an advantage; each made 
extreme claims; and each was persuaded to yield 
a little here and a little there, slowly narrowing 
the bounds of the disputed territory. More than 
once the President and the Cabinet believed that 
the last concession had been extorted and were 
prepared to yield on other matters. When the 
President was prepared, for example, to accept 
the hundredth meridian and the forty-third par- 
allel, Adams insisted on demanding the one hun- 
dred and second and the forty-second; and "af- 
ter a long and violent struggle," wrote Adams, 
"he [De Onis] . . . agreed to take longitude one 
hundred from the Red River to the Arkansas, and 
latitude forty-two from the source of the Arkan- 
sas to the South Sea." This was a momentous 
decision, for the United States acquired thus 
whatever claim Spain had to the northwest coast 



SPANISH DERELICTS 283 

but sacrificed its claim to Texas for the possession 
of the Floridas. 

Vexatious questions still remained to be settled. 
The spoliation claims which were to have been ad- 
justed by the convention of 1802 were finally left to 
a commission, the United States agreeing to assume 
all obligations to an amount not exceeding five 
million dollars. De Onis demurred at stating this 
amount in the treaty : he would be blamed for hav- 
ing betrayed the honor of Spain by selling the 
Floridas for a paltry five millions. To which 
Adams replied dryly that he ought to boast of his 
bargain instead of being ashamed of it, since it was 
notorious that the Floridas had always been a bur- 
den to the Spanish exchequer. Negotiations came 
to a standstill again when Adams insisted that cer- 
tain royal grants of land in the Floridas should be 
declared null and void. He feared, and not with- 
out reason, that these grants would deprive the 
United States of the domain which was to be used 
to pay the indemnities assumed in the treaty. De 
Onis resented the demand as "offensive to the dig- 
nity and imprescriptible rights of the Crown of 
Spain" ; and once again Neuville came to the rescue 
of the treaty and persuaded both parties to agree 
to a compromise. On the understanding that the 



284 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

royal grants in question had been made subse- 
quent to January 24, 1818, Adams agreed that all 
grants made since that date (when the first pro- 
posal was made by His Majesty for the cession of 
the Floridas) should be declared null and void; 
and that all grants made before that date should 
be confirmed. 

On the anniversary of Washington's birthday, 
De Onis and Adams signed the treaty which carried 
the United States to its natural limits on the south- 
east. The event seemed to Adams to mark "a great 
epocha in our history." "It was near one in the 
morning," he recorded in his diary, "when I closed 
the day with ejaculations of fervent gratitude to 
the Giver of all good. It was, perhaps, the most 
important day of my life. . . . Let no idle and 
unfounded exultation take possession of my mind, 
as if I would ascribe to my own foresight or exer- 
tions any portion of the event." But misgivings 
followed hard on these joyous reflections. The 
treaty had still to be ratified, and the disposition 
of the Spanish Cortes was uncertain. There was, 
too, considerable opposition in the Senate. "A 
watchful eye, a resolute purpose, a calm and 
patient temper, and a favoring Providence will 
all be as indispensable for the future as they 



SPANISH DERELICTS 285 

have been for the past in the management of this 
negotiation," Adams reminded himself. He had 
need of all these qualities in the trying months 
that followed. 



CHAPTER XIV 

FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 

The decline and fall of the Spanish Empire does 
not challenge the imagination like the decline and 
fall of that other Empire with which alone it can 
be compared, possibly because no Gibbon has 
chronicled its greatness. Yet its dissolution af- 
fected profoundly the history of three continents. 
While the Floridas were slipping from the grasp of 
Spain, the provinces to the south were wrenching 
themselves loose, with protestations which pene- 
trated to European chancelries as well as to Amer- 
ican legislative halls. To Czar Alexander and 
Prince Metternich, sponsors for the Holy Alliance 
and preservers of the peace of Europe, these decla- 
rations of independence contained the same insid- 
ious philosophy of revolution which they had 
pledged themselves everywhere to combat. To 
simple American minds, the familiar words liberty 
and independence in the mouths of South American 

286 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 287 

patriots meant what they had to their own grand- 
sires, strugghng to throw off the shackles of British 
imperial control. Neither Europe nor America, 
however, knew the actual conditions in these new- 
born republics below the equator; and both 
governed their conduct by their prepossessions. 

To the typically American mind of Henry Clay, 
now untrammeled by any sense of responsibility, 
for he was a free lance in the House of Representa- 
tives once more, the emancipation of South Amer- 
ica was a thrilling and sublime spectacle — "the 
glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people 
struggling to burst their chains and to be free." In 
a memorable speech in 1818 he had expressed the 
firm conviction that there could be but one out- 
come to this struggle. Independent these South 
American states would be. Equally clear to his 
mind was their political destiny. Whatever their 
forms of government, they would be animated by 
an American feeling and guided by an American 
policy. *'They will obey the laws of the system 
of the new world, of which they will compose a 
part, in contradistinction to that of Europe." To 
this struggle and to this destiny the United States 
could not remain indifferent. He would not have 
the Administration depart from its policy of strict 



,288 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

and impartial neutrality but he would ui*ge the 
expediency — nay, the justice — of recognizing es- 
tablished governments in Spanish America. Such 
recognition was not a breach of neutrality, for it 
did not imply material aid in the wars of liberation 
but only the moral sympathy of a great free people 
for their southern brethren. 

Contrasted with Clay's glowing enthusiasm, the 
attitude of the Administration, directed by the 
prudent Secretary of State, seemed cold, calculat- 
ing, and rigidly conventional. For his part, Adams 
could see little resemblance between these revolu- 
tions in South America and that of 1776. Cer- 
tainly it had never been disgraced by such acts of 
buccaneering and piracy as were of everyday oc- 
cmTcnce in South American waters. The United 
States had contended for civil rights and then for in- 
dependence; in South America civil rights had been 
ignored by all parties. He could discern neither uni- 
ty of cause nor unity of effort in the confused 
history of recent struggles in South America; and 
until orderly government was achieved, with due 
regard to fundamental civil rights, he would not 
have the United States swerve in the slightest 
degree from the path of strict neutrality. Mr. 
Clay, he observed in his diary, had "mounted his 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 289 

South American great horse ... to control or 
overthrow the executive.'* 

President Monroe, however, was more impres- 
sionable, more responsive to popular opinion, and 
at this moment (as the presidential year ap- 
proached) more desirous to placate the opposition. 
He agreed with Adams that the moment had not 
come when the United States alone might safely 
recognize the South American states, but he be- 
lieved that concerted action by the United States 
and Great Britain might win recognition without 
wounding the sensibilities of Spain. The time was 
surely not far distant when Spain would welcome 
recognition as a relief from an impoverishing and 
hopeless war. Meanwhile the President coupled pro- 
fessions of neutrality and expressions of sympathy 
for the revolutionists in every message to Congress. 

The temporizing policy of the Administration 
aroused Clay to another impassioned plea for those 
southern brethren whose hearts — despite all rebuffs 
from the Department of State — still turned to- 
ward the United States. "We should become the 
center of a system which would constitute the 
rallying point of human freedom against the despot- 
ism of the Old World. . . . Why not proceed 
to act on our own responsibility and recognize these 



290 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

governments as independent, instead of taking the 
lead of the Holy Alliance in a course which jeopard- 
izes the happiness of unborn millions?" He dep- 
recated this deference to foreign powers. "If 
Lord Castlereagh says we may recognize, we do; 
if not, we do not. . . . Our institutions now 
make us free; but how long shall we continue so, if 
we mold our opinions on those of Europe? Let us 
break these commercial and political fetters; let 
us no longer watch the nod of any European pol- 
itician ; let us become real and true Americans, and 
place ourselves at the head of the American system." 
The question of recognition was thus thrust into 
the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune 
time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, 
for reasons best known to His Majesty the King 
of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General 
Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask 
for certain explanations. The Administration had 
every reason at this moment to wish to avoid fur- 
ther causes of irritation to Spanish pride. It is 
more than probable, indeed, that Clay was not 
unwilling to embarrass the President and his Sec- 
retary of State. He still nursed his personal 
grudge against the President and he did not dis- 
guise his hostility to the treaty. What aroused 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 291 

his resentment was the sacrifice of Texas for Flori- 
da. Florida would have fallen to the United States 
eventually like ripened fruit, he believed. Why, 
then, yield an incomparably richer and greater ter- 
ritory for that which was bound to become theirs 
whenever the American people wished to take it? 

But what were the explanations which Vives de- 
manded.'^ Weary hours spent in conference with 
the wily Spaniard convinced Adams that the great 
obstacle to the ratification of the treaty by Spain 
had been the conviction that the United States was 
only waiting ratification to recognize the inde- 
pendence of the Spanish colonies. Bitterly did 
Adams regret the advances which he had made to 
Great Britain, at the instance of the President, and 
still more bitterly did he deplore those paragraphs 
in the President's messages which had expressed an 
all too ready sympathy with the aims of the insur- 
gents. But regrets availed nothing and the Secre- 
tary of State had to put the best face possible on 
the policy of the Administration. He told Vives 
in unmistakable language that the United States 
could not subscribe to "new engagements as the 
price of obtaining the ratification of the old," Cer- 
tainly the United States would not comply with 
the Spanish demand and pledge itself "to form no 



292 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

relations with the pretended governments of the 
revolted provinces of Spain." As for the royal 
grants which De Onis had agreed to call null and 
void, if His Majesty insisted upon their validity, 
perhaps the United States might acquiesce for an 
equivalent area west of the Sabine River. In some 
alarm Vives made haste to say that the King did 
not insist upon the confirmation of these grants. 
In the end he professed himself satisfied with Mr. 
Adams's explanations; he would send a messenger 
to report to His Majesty and to secure formal 
authorization to exchange ratifications. 

Another long period of suspense followed. The 
Spanish Cortes did not advise the King to accept 
the treaty until October; the Senate did not re- 
affirm its ratification until the following February; 
and it was two years to a day after the signing of 
the treaty that Adams and Vives exchanged formal 
ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages 
of his diary, so that posterity might read, the con- 
viction that the hand of an Overruling Provi- 
dence was visible in this, the most important event 
of his life. 

If, as many thought, the Administration had de- 
layed recognition of the South American republics 
in order not to offend Spanish feelings while the 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 293 

Florida treaty was under consideration, it had now 
no excuse for further hesitation ; yet it was not until 
March 8, 1822, that President Monroe announced 
to Congress his belief that the time had come when 
those provinces of Spain which had declared their 
independence and were in the enjoyment of it 
should be formally recognized. On the 19th of June 
he received the accredited charge d'affaires of the 
Republic of Colombia. 

The problem of recognition was not the only 
one which the impending dissolution of the Spanish 
colonial empire left to harass the Secretary of State. 
Just because Spain had such vast territorial pre- 
tensions and held so little by actual occupation on 
the North American continent, there was danger 
that these shadowy claims would pass into the 
hands of aggressive powers with the will and re- 
sources to aggrandize themselves. One day in Jan- 
uary, 1821, while Adams was awaiting the outcome 
of his conferences with Vives, Stratford Canning, 
the British Minister, was announced at his office. 
Canning came to protest against what he under- 
stood was the decision of the United States to ex- 
tend its settlements at the mouth of the Columbia 
River. Adams replied that he knew of no such 



294 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

determination; but he deemed it very probable 
that the settlements on the Pacific coast would be 
increased. Canning expressed rather ill-natured 
surprise at this statement, for he conceived that 
such a policy would be a palpable violation of the 
Convention of 1818. "Without replying, Adams 
rose from his seat to procure a copy of the treaty 
and then read aloud the parts referring to the joint 
occupation of the Oregon country. A stormy collo- 
quy followed in which both participants seem to 
have lost their tempers. Next day Canning re- 
turned to the attack, and Adams challenged the 
British claim to the mouth of the Columbia. 
"Why," exclaimed Canning, "do you not know 
that we have a claim.^^" "I do not hoow,'* said 
Adams, "what you claim nor what you do not 
claim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you 
claim — " " Perhaps," said Canning, " a piece of 
the moon." "No," replied Adams, "I have not 
heard that you claim exclusively any part of the 
moon; but there is not a spot on this habitable 
globe that I could ajQSrm you do not claim; and 
there is none which you may not claim with as 
much color of right as you can have to Columbia 
River or its mouth." 

With equal sang-froid, the Secretary of State 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 295 

met threatened aggression from another quarter. 
In September of this same year, the Czar issued a 
ukase claiming the Pacific coast as far south as the 
fifty-first parallel and declaring Bering Sea closed 
to the commerce of other nations. Adams prompt- 
ly refused to recognize these pretensions and de- 
clared to Baron de Tuyll, the Russian Minister, 
*' that we should contest the right of Russia to any 
territorial establishment on this continent, and 
that we should assume distinctly the principle that 
the American continents are no longer subjects for 
any new European colonial establishments."' 

Not long after this interview Adams was notified 
by Baron Tuyll that the Czar, in conformity with 
the political principles of the allies, had determined 
in no case whatever to receive any agent from the 
Government of the Republic of Colombia or from 
any other government which owed its existence to 
the recent events in the New World. Adams's first 
impulse was to pen a reply that would show the 
inconsistency between these political principles 
and the unctuous professions of Christian duty 
which had resounded in the Holy Alliance; but the 

' Before Adams retired from office, he had the satisfaction of 
concluding a treaty (1824) with Russia by which the Czar aban- 
doned his claims to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea and agreed 
to plant no colonies on the Pacific Coast south of 54° 40'. 



296 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

note which he drafted was, perhaps fortunately, 
not dispatched until it had been revised by Presi- 
dent and Cabinet a month later, under stress of 
other circumstances. 

At still another focal point the interests of the 
United States ran counter to the covetous desires of 
European powers. Cuba, the choicest of the prov- 
inces of Spain, still remained nominally loyal; 
but, should the hold of Spain upon this Pearl of the 
Antilles relax, every maritime power would swoop 
down upon it. The immediate danger, however, 
was not that revolution would here as elsewhere 
sever the province from Spain, leaving it helpless 
and incapable of self-support, but that France, 
after invading Spain and restoring the monarchy, 
would also intervene in the affairs of her provinces. 
The transfer of Cuba to France by the grateful 
King was a possibility which haunted the dreams of 
George Canning at Westminster as well as of John 
Quincy Adams at Washington. The British For- 
eign Minister attempted to secure a pledge from 
France that she would not acquire any Spanish- 
American territory either by conquest or by treaty, 
while the Secretary of State instructed the Ameri- 
can Minister to Spain not to conceal from the 
Spanish Government *'the repugnance of the 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 297 

United States to the transfer of the Island of Cuba 
by Spain to any other power." Canning was equal- 
ly fearful lest the United States should occupy 
Cuba and he would have welcomed assurances that 
it had no designs upon the island. Had he known 
precisely the attitude of Adams, he would have 
been still more uneasy, for Adams was perfectly 
sure that Cuba belonged " by the laws of political 
as well as of physical gravitation" to the North 
American continent, though he was not for the 
present ready to assist the operation of political 
and physical laws. 

Events were inevitably detaching Great Britain 
from the concert of Europe and putting her in op- 
position to the policy of mtervention, both because 
of what it meant in Spain and what it might mean 
when applied to the New World. Knowing that the 
United States shared these latter apprehensions, 
George Canning conceived that the two countries 
might join in a declaration against any project by 
any Em-op ean power for subjugating the colonies 
of South America either on behalf or in the name of 
Spain. He ventured to ask Richard Rush, Amer- 
ican Minister at London, what his government 
would say to such a proposal. For his part he was 
quite willing to state publicly that he believed the 



298 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

recovery of the colonies by Spain to be hopeless; 
that recognition of their independence was only a 
question of proper time and circumstance; that 
Great Britain did not aim at the possession of any 
of them, though she could not be indifferent to 
their transfer to any other power. "If," said Can- 
ning, "these opinions and feelings are, as I firmly 
believe them to be, common to your government 
with ours, why should we hesitate mutually to con- 
fide them to each other ; and to declare them in the 
face of the world?" 

Why, indeed? To Rush there occurred one good 
and suflScient answer, which, however, he could not 
make: he doubted the disinterestedness of Great 
Britain. He could only reply that he »yould not 
feel justified in assuming the responsibility for a 
joint declaration unless Great Britain would first 
unequivocally recognize the South American re- 
publics; and, when Canning balked at the sugges- 
tion, he could only repeat, in as conciliatory man- 
ner as possible, his reluctance to enter into any 
engagement. Not once only but three times Can- 
ning repeated his overtures, even urging Rush to 
write home for powers and instructions. 

The dispatches of Rush seemed so important to 
President Monroe that he sent copies of them to 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 299 

Jefferson and Madison, with the query — which 
revealed his own attitude — whether the moment 
had not arrived when the United States might 
safely depart from its traditional policy and meet 
the proposal of the British Government. If there 
was one principle which ran consistently through 
the devious foreign policy of Jefferson and Madi- 
son, it was that of political isolation from Europe. 
"Our first and fundamental maxim," Jefferson 
wrote in reply, harking back to the old formulas, 
"should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils 
of Europe, our second never to suffer Europe to 
intermeddle with Cis- Atlantic affairs." He then 
continued in this wise: 

America, North and South, has a set of interests 
distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. 
She should therefore have a system of her own, sepa- 
rate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is 
laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our en- 
deavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that 
of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us 
in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accom- 
pany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we de- 
tach her from the band of despots, bring her mighty 
weight into the scale of free government and emanci- 
pate a continent at one stroke which might otherwise 
linger long in doubt and difficulty. ... I am 
clearly of Mr. Canning's opinion, that it will prevent, 



300 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

instead of provoking war. With Great Britain with- 
drawn from their scale and shifted into that of our 
two continents, all Europe combined would not under- 
take such a war. . . . Nor is the occasion to be 
slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our 
protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of 
nations, by the interference of any one in the internal 
affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Buonaparte, 
and now continued by the equally lawless alliance, 
calling itself Holy. 

Madison argued the case with more reserve but 
arrived at the same conclusion : " There ought not to 
be any backwardness therefore, I think, in meeting 
her [England] in the way she has proposed." The 
dispatches of Rush produced a very different effect, 
however, upon the Secretary of State, whose tem- 
perament fed upon suspicion and who now found 
plenty of food for thought both in what Rush said 
and in what he did not say. Obviously Canning 
was seeking a definite compact with the United 
States against the designs of the allies, not out of 
any altruistic motive but for selfish ends. Great 
Britain, Rush had v^Titten bluntly, had as little 
sympathy with popular rights as it had on the field 
of Lexington. It was bent on preventing France 
from making conquests, not on making South 
America free. Just so, Adams reasoned : Canning 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 301 

desires to secure from the United States a public 
pledge "ostensibly against the forcible interference 
of the Holy Alliance between Spain and South 
America; but really or especially against the ac- 
quisition to the United States themselves of any 
part of the Spanish-American possessions." By 
joining with Great Britain we would give her a 
"substantial and perhaps inconvenient pledge 
against ourselves, and really obtain nothing in re- 
tmn." He believed that it would be more candid 
and more dignified to decline Canning's overtm'es 
and to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and 
France. For his part he did not wish the United 
States "to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of 
the British man-of-war ! " 

Thus Adams argued in the sessions of the Cabi- 
net, quite ignorant of the correspondence which 
had passed between the President and his mentors. 
Confident of his ability to handle the situation, he 
asked no more congenial task than to draft replies 
to Baron Tuyll and to Canning and instructions to 
the ministers at London, St. Petersburg, and Paris; 
but he impressed upon Monroe the necessity of 
making all these communications "part of a com- 
bined system of policy and adapted to each other." 
Not so easily, however, was the President detached 



302 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

from the influence of the two Virginia oracles. He 
took sharp exception to the letter which Adams 
drafted in reply to Baron Tuyll, saying that he 
desired to refrain from any expressions which 
would irritate the Czar; and thus turned what was 
to be an emphatic declaration of principles into 
what Adams called "the tamest of state papers." 

The Secretary's draft of instructions to Rush had 
also to run the gauntlet of amendment by the Presi- 
dent and his Cabinet; but it emerged substantially 
unaltered in content and purpose. Adams pro- 
fessed to find common ground with Great Britain, 
while pointing out with much subtlety that if she 
believed the recovery of the colonies by Spain was 
really hopeless, she was under moral obligation to 
recognize them as independent states and to favor 
only such an adjustment between them and the 
mother country as was consistent with the fact of 
independence. The United States was in perfect 
accord with the principles laid down by Mr. Can- 
ning : it desired none of the Spanish possessions for 
itself but it could not see with indifference any por- 
tion of them transferred to any other power. Nor 
could the United States see with indifference "any 
attempt by one or more powers of Europe to restore 
those new states to the crown of Spain, or to deprive 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 303 

them, in any manner whatever, of the freedom and 
independence which they have acquired." But, 
for accomplishing the purposes which the two 
governments had in common — and here the 
masterful Secretary of State had his own way — it 
was advisable that they should act separately, each 
making such representations to the continental 
allies as circumstances dictated. 

Further communications from Baron Tuyll gave 
Adams the opportunity, which he had once lost, of 
enunciating the principles underlying American 
policy. In a masterly paper dated November 27, 
1823, he adverted to the declaration of the allied 
monarchs that they would never compound with 
revolution but would forcibly interpose to guarantee 
the tranquillity of civilized states. In such declara- 
tions "the President," wrote Adams, "wishes to 
perceive sentiments, the application of which is 
limited, and intended in their results to be limited 
to the affairs of Europe. . . . The United States 
of America, and their government, could not see 
with indifference, the forcible interposition of any 
European Power, other than Spain, either to re- 
store the dominion of Spain over her emancipated 
Colonies in America, or to establish Monarchical 
Governments in those Countries, or to transfer 



304 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

any of the possessions heretofore or yet subject to 
Spain in the American Hemisphere, to any other 
European Power." 

But so httle had the President even yet grasped 
the wide sweep of the poHcy which his Secretary of 
State was framing that, when he read to the Cabi- 
net a first draft of his annual message, he expressed 
his pointed disapprobation of the invasion of Spain 
by France and urged an acknov/ledgment of Greece 
as an independent nation. This declaration was, 
as Adams remarked, a call to arms against all Eu- 
rope. And once again he urged the President to 
refrain from any utterance which might be con- 
strued as a pretext for retaliation by the allies. 
If they meant to provoke a quarrel with the United 
States, the administration must meet it and not 
invite it. "If they intend now to interpose by 
force, we shall have as much as we can do to pre- 
vent them," said he, ''without going to bid them 
defiance in the heart of Europe." "The ground I 
wish to take," he continued, "is that of earnest re- 
monstrance against the interference of the Euro- 
pean powers by force with South America, but to 
disclaim all interference on our part with Eiu*ope; 
to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to 
that." In the end Adams had his way and the 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 305 

President revised the paragi'aphs dealing with 
foreign affairs so as to make them conform to 
Adams's desires. 

No one who reads the message which President 
Monroe sent to Congress on December 2, 1823, can 
fail to observe that the paragraphs which have 
an enduring significance as declarations of policy 
are anticipated in the masterly state papers of 
the Secretary of State. Alluding to the differences 
with Russia in the Pacific Northwest, the President 
repeated the principle which Adams had stated to 
Baron Tuyll : "The occasion has been judged proper 
for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and 
interests of the United States are involved, that the 
American continents, by the free and independent 
condition which they have assumed and maintain, 
are henceforth not to be considered as subjects 
for future colonization by any European powers." 
And the vital principle of abstention from Euro- 
pean affairs and of adherence to a distinctly Amer- 
ican system, for which Adams had contended so 
stubbornly, found memorable expression in the 
following paragraph : 

In the wars of the European powers in matters relat- 
ing to themselves we have never taken any part, nor 
does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when 



306 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we 
resent injuries or make preparations for our defense. 
With the movements in this hemisphere we are of 
necessity more immediately connected, and by causes 
which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial 
observers. The political system of the allied powers 
is essentially different in this respect from that of 
America. This difference proceeds from that which 
exists in their respective Governments; and to the de- 
fense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss 
of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the 
wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under 
which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole 
nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and 
to the amicable relations existing between the United 
States and those powers to declare that we should con- 
sider any attempt on their part to extend their system 
to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our 
peace and safety. With the existing colonies and de- 
pendencies of any European power we have not inter- 
fered and shall not interfere. But with the Govern- 
ments who have declared their independence and 
maintained it, and whose independence we have, on 
great consideration and on just principles, acknowl- 
edged, we could not view any interposition for the 
I purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other 
^ manner their destiny, by any European power in any 
\ other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly 
disposition toward the United States. 

Later generations have read strange meanings 
into Monroe's message, and have elevated into a 



FRAMING AN AMERICAN POLICY 307 

"doctrine" those declarations of policy which had 
only an immediate application. With the inter- 
pretations and applications of a later day, this book 
has nothing to do. Suffice it to say that President 
Monroe and his advisers accomplished their pur- 
poses; and the evidence that they were successful 
is contained in a letter which Richard Rush wrote 
to the Secretary of State, on December 27, 1823 : 

But the most decisive blow to all despotick Interfer- 
ence with the new States is that which it has received 
in the President's Message at the opening of Congress. 
It was looked for here with extraordinary interest at 
this juncture, and I have heard that the British packet 
which left New York the beginning of this month was 
instructed to wait for it and bring it over with all 
speed. . . . On its publicity in London . . . the 
credit of all the Spanish American securities imme- 
diately rose, and the question of the final and complete 
safety of the new States from all European coercion, 
is now considered as at rest. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE END OF AN ERA 

It was in the midst of the diplomatic contest for 
the Floridas that James Monroe was for the second 
time elected to the Presidency, with singularly 
little display of partisanship. This time all the 
electoral votes but one were cast for him. Of all 
the Presidents only George Washington has re- 
ceived a unanimous vote; and to Monroe, therefore, 
belongs the distinction of standing second to the 
Father of his Country in the vote of electors. The 
single vote which Monroe failed to get fell to his 
Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. It is a 
circumstance of some interest that the father of the 
Secretary, old John Adams, so far forgot his Feder- 
alist antecedents that he served as Republican 
elector in Massachusetts and cast his vote for 
James Monroe. Never since parties emerged in the 
second administration of Washington had such 
extraordinary unanimity prevailed. 

308 



THE END OF AN ERA S09 

Across this scene of political harmony, however, 
the Missouri controversy cast the specter-like 
shadow of slavery. For the moment, and often in 
after years, it seemed inevitable that parties would 
spring into new vigor following sectional lines. All 
patriots were genuinely alarmed. "This momen- 
tous question," wrote Jefferson, "like a fire bell in 
the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I 
considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It 
is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a 
reprieve only, not a final sentence." 

What Jefferson termed a reprieve was the settle- 
ment of the Missouri question by the compromise 
of 1820. To the demands of the South that Mis- 
som*i should be admitted into the Union as a slave 
State, with the constitution of her choice, the 
North yielded, on condition that the rest of the 
Louisiana Purchase north of 36"^ 30' should be for- 
ever free. Henceforth slaveholders might enter 
Missouri and the rest of the old province of Loui- 
siana below her southern boundary line, but beyond 
this line, into the greater Northwest, they might 
not take their human chattels. To this act of 
settlement President Mom*oe gave his assent, for 
he believed that further controversy would shake 
the Union to its very foundations. 



310 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

With the angry criminations and recriminations 
of North and South ringing in his ears, Jefferson 
had little faith in the permanency of such a settle- 
ment. "A geographical line," said he, "coinciding 
with a marked principle, moral and political, once 
conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, 
will never be obliterated ; and every new irritation 
will mark it deeper and deeper." And Madison, 
usually optimistic about the future of his beloved 
country, indulged only the gloomiest forebodings 
about slavery. Both the ex-Presidents took what 
comfort they could in projects of emancipation and 
deportation. Jefferson would have had slavehold- 
ers yield up slaves born after a certain date to the 
guardianship of the State, which would then pro- 
vide for their removal to Santo Domingo at a 
proper age. Madison took heart at the prospect 
opened up by the Colonization Society which he 
trusted would eventually end "this dreadful calam- 
ity" of human slavery. Fortunately for their 
peace of mind, neither lived to see these frail hopes 
dashed to pieces. 

Signs were not wanting that statesmen of the 
Virginia school were not to be leaders in the new 
era which was dawning. On several occasions both 
Madison and Monroe had shown themselves out 



THE END OF AN ERA 311 

of touch with the newer currents of national hfe. 
Their point of view was that of the epoch which be- 
gan with the French Revolution and ended with 
the overthrow of Napoleon and the pacification of 
Europe. Inevitably foreign affairs had absorbed 
their best thought. To maintain national inde- 
pendence against foreign aggression had been their 
constant purpose, whether the menace came from 
Napoleon's designs upon Louisiana, or from British 
disregard of neutral rights, or from Spanish help- 
lessness on the frontiers of her Empire. But now, 
with political and commercial independence as- 
sured, a new direction was imparted to national 
endeavor. America made a volte-face and turned 
to the setting sun. 

During the second quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury every ounce of national vitality went into the 
conquest and settlement of the Mississippi Valley. 
Once more at peace with the world, Americans set 
themselves to the solution of the problems which 
grew out of this vast migration from the Atlantic 
seaboard to the interior. These were problems of 
territorial organization, of distribution of public 
lands, of inland trade, of highways and water- 
ways, of revenue and appropriation — problems 
that focused in the oflSces of the Secretaries of 



312 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

the Treasury and of War. And lurking behind all 
was the specter of slavery and sectionalism. 

To impatient homeseekers who crossed the Alle- 
ghanies, it never occurred to question the com- 
petence of the Federal Government to meet all 
their wants. That the Government at Washington 
should construct and maintain highways, improve 
and facilitate the navigation of inland waterways, 
seemed a most reasonable expectation. What else 
was government for? But these proposed activi- 
ties did not seem so obviously legitimate to Presi- 
dents of the Virginia Dynasty; not so readily could 
they waive constitutional scruples. Madison felt 
impelled to veto a bill for constructing roads and 
canals and improving waterways because he could 
find nowhere in the Constitution any specific au- 
thority for the Federal Government to embark on a 
policy of internal improvements. His last message 
to Congress set forth his objections in detail and 
was designed to be his farewell address. He would 
rally his party once more around the good old 
JeJBfersonian doctrines. Monroe felt similar doubts 
when he was presented with a bill to authorize the 
collection of tolls on the new Cumberland Road. 
In a veto message of prodigious length he, too, 
harked back to the original Republican principle of 



THE END OF AN ERA 313 

strict construction of the Constitution. The leader- 
ship which the Virginians thus refused to take fell 
soon to men of more resolute character who would 
not let the dead hand of legalism stand between 
them and their hearts' desires. 

It is one of the ironies of American history that 
the settlement of the Mississippi Valley and of the 
Gulf plains brought acute pecuniary distress to the 
three great Virginians who had bent all their ener- 
gies to acquire these vast domains. The lure of 
virgin soil drew men and women in ever increasing 
numbers from the seaboard States. Farms that 
had once sufficed were cast recklessly on the market 
to bring what they would, while their owners 
staked their claims on new soil at a dollar and a 
quarter an acre. Depreciation of land values 
necessarily followed in States like Virginia; and the 
three ex-Presidents soon found themselves land- 
poor. In common with other planters, they had 
invested their surplus capital in land, only to find 
themselves unable to market their crops in the try- 
ing days of the Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts. 
They had suffered heavy losses from the British 
blockade during the war, and they had not fully 
recovered from these reverses when the general fall 



314 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

of prices came in 1819. Believing that they were 
facing only a temporary condition, they met their 
difficulties by financial expedients which in the end 
could only add to their burdens. 

A general reluctance to change their manner of 
life and to practice an intensive agriculture with 
diversified crops contributed, no doubt, to the gen- 
eral depression of planters in the Old Dominion. 
Jefferson at Monticello, Madison at Montpelier, 
and to a lesser extent Monroe at Oak Hill, main- 
tained their old establishments and still dispensed 
a lavish Southern hospitality, which indeed they 
could hardly avoid. A former President is forever 
condemned to be a public character. All kept open 
house for their friends, and none could bring himself 
to close his door to strangers, even when curiosity 
was the sole motive for intrusion. Sorely it must 
have tried the soul of Mrs. Randolph to find ac- 
commodations at Monticello for fifty uninvited and 
unexpected guests. Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, 
who has left lively descriptions of life at Montpelier, 
was once one of twenty-three guests. When a 
friend commented on the circumstance that no less 
than nine strange horses were feeding in the sta- 
bles at Montpelier, Madison remarked somewhat 
grimly that he was delighted with the society 



THE END OF AN ERA 315 

of the owners but could not confess to the same 
enthusiasm at the presence of their horses. 

Both Jefferson and Madison were victims of the 
indiscretion of others. Madison was obHged to pay 
the debts of a son of Mrs. Madison by her first 
marriage and became so financially embarrassed 
that he was forced to ask President Biddle of the 
Bank of the United States for a long loan of six thou- 
sand dollars — only to suffer the humiliation of a 
refusal. He had then to part with some of his lands 
at a great sacrifice, but he retained Montpelier and 
continued to reside there, though in reduced cir- 
cumstances, until his death in 1836. At about the 
same time Jefferson received v/hat he called his 
cowp de grdce. He had endorsed a note of twenty 
thousand dollars for Governor Wilson C. Nicholas 
and upon his becoming insolvent was held to the 
full amount of the note. His only assets were his 
lands which would bring only a fifth of their former 
price. To sell on these ruinous terms was to im- 
poverish himself and his family. His distress was 
pathetic. In desperation he applied to the Legis- 
lature for permission to sell his property by lottery; 
but he was spared this last humiliation by the 
timely aid of friends, who started popular sub- 
scriptions to relieve his distress. Monroe was less 



316 JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES 

fortunate, for he was obliged to sell Oak Hill and to 
leave Old Virginia forever. He died in New York 
City on the Fourth of July, 1831. 

The latter years of Jefferson's life were cheered 
by the renewal of his old friendship with John 
Adams, now in retirement at Quincy. Full of 
pleasant reminiscence are the letters which passed 
between them, and full too of allusions to the pass- 
ing show. Neither had lost all interest in politics, 
but both viewed events with the quiet contempla- 
tion of old men. Jefferson was absorbed to the end 
in his last great hobby, the university that was 
slowly taking bodily form four miles away across 
the valley from Monticello. When bodily infirmi- 
ties would not permit him to ride so far, he would 
watch the workmen through a telescope mounted 
on one of the terraces. *' Crippled wrists and fin- 
gers make writing slow and laborious," he wrote to 
Adams. " But while writing to you, I lose the sense 
of these things in the recollection of ancient times, 
when youth and health made happiness out of 
everything. I forget for a while the hoary winter of 
age, when we can think of nothing but how to keep 
ourselves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy 
hours until the friendly hand of death shall rid us 
of all at once. Against this tedium vitcBy however, 



THE END OF AN ERA 317 

I am fortunately mounted on a hobby, which, in- 
deed, I should have better managed some thirty 
or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still 
sufficient to give exercise and amusement to an 
octogenary rider. This is the establishment of a 
University." Alluding to certain published letters 
which revived old controversies, he begged his old 
friend not to allow his peace of mind to be shaken. 
"It would be strange indeed, if, at our years, we 
were to go back an age to hunt up imaginary or 
forgotten facts, to disturb the repose of affections 
so sweetening to the evening of our lives." 

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of 
Independence approached, Jefferson and Adams 
were besought to take part in the celebration which 
was to be held in Philadelphia. The infirmities of 
age rested too heavily upon them to permit their 
journeying so far; but they consecrated the day 
anew with their lives. At noon, on the Fourth of 
July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sound- 
ing its old message to the people of Philadelphia, 
the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few 
hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the 
name of his old friend upon his lips . 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

GENERAL WORKS 

Five well-known historians have written comprehen- 
sive works on the period covered by the administra- 
tions of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe: John B. 
McMaster has stressed the social and economic aspects 
in A History of the People of the United States; James 
Schouler has dwelt upon the political and constitu- 
tional problems in his History of the United States of 
America under the Constitution; Woodrow Wilson has 
written a History of the American People which indeed 
is less a history than a brilliant essay on history; Her- 
mann von Hoist has construed the Constitutional 
and Political History of the United States in terms of 
the slavery controversy; and Edward Channing has 
brought forward his painstaking History of the United 
States, touching many phases of national life, to the 
close of the second war with England, To these general 
histories should be added The American Nation, edited 
by Albert Bushnell Hart, three volumes of which span 
the administrations of the three Virginians: E. Chan- 
ning's The Jeffersonian System (1906) ; K. C. Babcock's 
The Rise of American Nationality (1906) ; F. J. Turner's 
Rise of the Neio West (1906). 

319 



320 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

CHAPTER I 

No historian can approach this epoch without doing 
homage to Henry Adams, whose History of the United 
States, 9 vols. (1889-1891), is at once a Hterary per- 
formance of extraordinary merit and a treasure-house 
of information. Skillfully woven into the text is 
documentary material from foreign archives which 
Adams, at great expense, had transcribed and trans- 
lated. Intimate accounts of Washington and its so- 
ciety may be found in the following books: G. Gibbs, 
Memoirs of the Administrations of Washingto7i and John 
Adams, 2 vols. (1846); Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith, 
The First Forty Years of Washington Society (1906) ; Anne 
H. Wharton, Social Life in the Early Republic (1902). 
The Life of Thomas Jefferson, 3 vols. (1858), by Henry 
S. Randall is rich in authentic information about the 
life of the great Virginia statesman but it is marred by 
excessive hero-worship. Interesting side-lights on Jef- 
ferson and his entourage are shed by his granddaughter, 
Sarah N. Randolph, in a volume called Domestic Life 
of Thomas Jefferson (1871). 

CHAPTER II 

The problems of patronage that beset President 
Jefferson are set forth by Gaillard Hunt in "Office- 
seeking during Jefferson's Administration," in the 
American Historical Review, vol. iii, p. 271, and by Carl 
R. Fish in The Civil Service and the Patronage (1905). 
There is no better way to enter sympathetically into 
Jefferson's mental world than to read his correspond- 
ence. The best edition of his writings is that by Paul 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 321 

Leicester Ford. Henry Adams has collected the Writ- 
ings of Albert Gallatin, 3 vols. (1879), and has written 
an admirable Life of Albert Gallatin (1879). Gaillard 
Hunt has written a short Life of James Madison (1902), 
and has edited his Writings, 9 vols. (1900-1910). The 
Federalist attitude toward the Administration is re- 
flected in the Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (1857). 
The intense hostility of New England Federalists ap- 
pears also in such books as Theodore Dwight's The 
Character of Thomas Jefferson, as exhibited in His Own 
Writings (1839). Franklin B. Dexter has set forth the 
facts relating to Abraham Bishop, that arch-rebel 
against the standing order in Connecticut, in the Pro- 
ceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
March, 1906. 

CHAPTER III 

The larger histories of the American navy by Ma- 
clay, Spears, and Clark describe the war with Tripoli, 
but by far the best account is G. W. Allen's Our Navy 
and the Barbary Corsairs (1905), which may be sup- 
plemented by C. O. Paullin's Commodore John Rodgers 
(1910). T. Harris's Life and Services of Commodore 
William Bainbridge (1837) contains much interesting 
information about service in the Mediterranean and 
the career of this gallant commander. C. H. Lincoln 
has edited "The Hull-Eaton Correspondence during 
the Expedition against Tripoli 1804-5" for the Pro- 
ceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 
XXI (1911). The treaties and conventions with the 
Barbary States are contained in Treaties, Conventions, 
International Actsy Protocols and Agreements between the 



322 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

United States of America and Other Powers, compiled 
by W. M. Malloy, 3 vols. (1910-1913). 

CHAPTER IV 

Even after the lapse of many years, Henry Adams's 
account of the purchase of Louisiana remains the best: 
Volumes i and ii of his History of the United States. J. 
A. Robertson in his Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, 
France, and the United States, 1785-1807, 2 vols. (1911), 
has brought together a mass of documents relating to 
the province and territory. Barbe-Marbois, Histoire 
de la Louisiana et de la Cession (1829), which is now ac- 
cessible in translation, is the main source of informa- 
tion for the French side of the negotiations. Frederick 
J. Turner, in a series of articles contributed to the 
American Historical Review (vols, ii, iii, vii, viii, x), 
has pointed out the significance of the diplomatic con- 
test for the Mississippi Valley. Louis Pelzer has writ- 
ten on the "Economic Factors in the Acquisition of 
Louisiana" in the Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley 
Historical Association, vol. vi (1913). There is no 
adequate biography of either Monroe or Livingston. 
T. L. Stoddard has written on The French Revolution 
in San Domingo (1914). 

CHAPTER V 

The vexed question of the boundaries of Louisiana 
is elucidated by Henry Adams in volumes ii and iii of 
his History of the United States. Among the more 
recent studies should be mentioned the articles con- 
tributed by Isaac J. Cox to volumes vi and x of the 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 323 

Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, and 
an article entitled "Was Texas Included in the Loui- 
siana Purchase?" by John R. Ficklen in the Publica- 
tions of the Southern History Association, vol. v. In 
the first two chapters of his History of the Western 
Boundary of the Louisiana Purchase (1914), T. M. 
Marshall has given a resume of the boundary question. 
Jefferson brought together the information which he 
possessed in "An Examination into the boundaries of 
Louisiana," which was first published in 1803 and 
which has been reprinted by the American Philosophi- 
cal Society in Documents relating to the Purchase and 
Exploration of Louisiana (1904). I. J. Cox has made 
an important contribution by his book on The Early 
Exploration of Louisiana (1906). The constitutional 
questions involved in the purchase and organization 
of Louisiana are reviewed at length by E. S. Brown in 
The Constitutional History of the Louisiana Purchase, 
1803-1812 (1920). 

CHAPTER VI 

The most painstaking account of Burr's expedition 
is W. F. McCaleb's The Aaron Burr Conspiracy (1903) 
which differs from Henry Adams's version in making 
James Wilkinson rather than Burr the heavy villain in 
the plot. Wilkinson's own account of the affair, which 
is thoroughly untrustworthy, is contained in his Mem- 
oirs of My Own Times, 3 vols. (1816). The treason- 
able intrigues of Wilkinson are proved beyond doubt 
by the investigations of W. R. Shepherd, "Wilkinson 
and the Beginnings of the Spanish Conspiracy," in 
vol. IX of The American Historical Review, and of I. J. 



324 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Cox, "General Wilkinson and His Later Intrigues 
with the Spaniards," in vol. xix of The American His- 
torical Review. James Barton's Life and Times of 
Aaron Burr (1858) is a biography of surpassing inter- 
est but must be corrected at many points by the works 
already cited. William Coleman's Collection of the 
Facts and the Documents relative to the Death of Major- 
General Alexander Hamilton (1804) contains the details 
of the great tragedy. The Federalist intrigues with 
Burr are traced by Henry Adams and more recently 
by S. E. Morison in the Life and Letters of Harrison 
Gray Otis, 2 vols. (1913). W. H. Safford's Blenner- 
hassett Papers (1861) and David Robertson's Reports 
of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr for Treason, and for 
a Misdemeanor, 2 vols. (1808), brought to light many 
interesting facts relating to the alleged conspiracy. 
The Ofidal Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, 1801- 
1816, 6 vols. (1917), contain material of great value. 

CHAPTER VII 

The history of impressment has yet to be written, but 
J. R. Hutchinson's The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore 
(1913) has shown clearly that the baleful efiPects of the 
British practice were not felt solely by American ship- 
masters. Admiral A. T. Mahan devoted a large part of 
his first volume on Sea Power in its relations to the War of 
1812, 2 vols. (1905), to the antecedents of the war. W. 
E. Lingelbach has made a notable contribution to our 
understanding of the Essex case in his article on " Eng- 
land and Neutral Trade" printed in The Military His- 
torian and Economist, vol. ii (1917). Of the contem- 
porary pamphlets, two are particularly illuminating: 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 325 

James Stephen, War in Disguise; or, the Frauds of the 
Neutral Flags ( 1 805 ) , presenting the English grievances, 
and An Examination of the British Doctrine, which 
Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade, not open in Time 
of Peace, prepared by the Department of State under 
Madison's direction in 1805. Captain Basil Hall's Voy- 
ages and Travels (1895) gives a vivid picture of life 
aboard a British frigate in American waters. A graphic 
account of the Leopard-Chesapeake affair is given by 
Henry Adams in Chapter I of his fourth volume. 

CHAPTERS VIII AND IX 

Besides the histories of Mahan and Adams, the 
reader will do well to consult several biographies for 
information about peaceable coercion in theory and 
practice. Among these may be mentioned Randall's 
Life of Thomas Jefferson, Adams's Life of Albert Galla- 
tin and John Randolph in the American Statesmen Se- 
ries, W. E. Dodd's Life of Nathaniel Macon (1903), D. 
R. Anderson's William Branch Giles (1914), and J. B. 
McMaster's Life and Times of Stephen Girard, 2 vols. 
(1917). For want of an adequate biography of Mon- 
roe, recourse must be taken to the Writings of James 
Monroe, 7 vols. (1898-1903), edited by S. M. Hamilton. 
J. B. Moore's Digest of International Law, 8 vols. 
(1906), contains a mass of material bearing on the 
rights of neutrals and the problems of neutral trade. 
The French decrees and the British orders-in-council 
were submitted to Congress with a message by Presi- 
dent Jefferson on the 23d of December, 1808, and may 
be found in American State Papers, Foreign Relations, 
vol. III. 



326 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

CHAPTER X 

The relations of the United States and Spanish Flor- 
ida are set forth in many works, of which three only 
need be mentioned: H. B. Fuller, The Purchase of 
Florida (1906), has devoted several chapters to the 
early history of the Floridas, but so far as West Florida 
is concerned his work is superseded by I. J. Cox's 
The West Florida Controversy, 1789-1813 (1918). The 
first volume. Diplomacy, of F. E. Chadwick's Rela- 
tions of the United States and Spain, 3 vols. (1909-11), 
gives an account of the several Florida controver- 
sies. Several books contribute to an understanding 
of the temper of the young insurgents in the Republi- 
can Party: Carl Schurz's Henry Clay, 2 vols, (1887), 
W. M. Meigs's Life of John Caldwell Calhoun, 2 vols. 
(1917), M. P. Follett's The Speaker of the House 
of Representatives (1896), and Henry Adams's John 
Randolph (1882). 

CHAPTER XI 

The civil history of President Madison's second 
term of office may be followed in Adams's History of 
the United States, vols, vii, viii, and ix; in Hunt's Life 
of James Madison; in Adams's Life of Albert Gallatin; 
and in such fragmentary records of men and events as 
are found in the Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison 
(1886) and Mrs. M. B. Smith's The First Forty Years of 
Washington Society (1906). The history of New Eng- 
land Federalism may be traced in H. C. Lodge's Life 
and Letters of George Cabot (1878) ; in Edmund Quincy's 
Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (1867); in the 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 327 

Life of Timothy Pickering, 4 vols. (1867-73); and in 
S. E. Morison's Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, 
2 vols. (1913). Theodore Dwight published his His- 
tory of the Hartford Convention in 1833. Henry Adams 
has collected the Documents relating to New-England 
Federalism, 1800-1815 (1878). The Federalist op- 
position to the war is reflected in such books as 
Mathew Carey's The Olive Branch; or. Faults on Both 
Sides (1814) and William Sullivan's Familiar Letters 
on Public Characters (1834). 



CHAPTER XII 

The history of the negotiations at Ghent has been 
recounted by Mahan and Henry Adams, and more 
recently by F. A. Updyke, The Diplomacy of the War of 
1812 (1915). Aside from the State Payers, the chief 
sources of information are Adams's Life of Gallatin 
and Writings of Gallatin, the Memoirs of John Quincy 
Adams, 12 vols. (1874-1877), and Writings of John 
Quincy Adams, 7 vols. (1913-), edited by W. C. Ford, 
the Papers of James A. Bayard, 1796-1815 (1915), ed- 
ited by Elizabeth Donnan, the Correspondence, Des- 
patches, and Other Papers, of Viscount Castlereagh, 12 
vols. (1851-53), and the Supplementary Despatches 
. . . of the Duke of Wellington, 15 vols. (1858-72). 
The Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety, vol. XLViii (1915), contain the instructions of the 
British commissioners. A Great Peace Maker, the 
Diary of James Gallatin, Secretary to Albert Gallatin 
(1914) records many interesting boyish impressions of 
the commissioners and their labors at Ghent. 



328 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

CHAPTER XIII 

The want of a good biography of James Monroe is 
felt increasingly as one enters upon the history of his 
administrations. Some personal items may be gleaned 
from A Narrative of a Tour of Observation Made during 
the Summer of 1817 (1818); and many more may be 
found in the Memoirs and Writings of John Quincy 
Adams. The works by Fuller and Chadwick already 
cited deal with the negotiations leading to the acqui- 
sition of Florida. The Memoirs et Souvenirs of Hyde 
de Neuville, 3 vols. (1893-4), supplement the record 
which Adams left in his diary. J. S. Bassett's Life 
of Andrew Jackson, 2 vols. (1911), is far less entertain- 
ing than James Barton's Life of Andrew Jackson, 3 vols. 
(1860), but much more reliable. 

CHAPTER XIV 

The problem of the recognition of the South Amer- 
ican republics has been put in its historical setting by 
F. L. Paxson in The Independence of the South American 
Republics (1903). The relations of the United States 
and Spain are described by F. E. Chadwick in the work 
already cited and by J. H. Latane in The United States 
and Latin America (1920). To these titles may be 
added J. M. Callahan's Cuba and International Rela- 
tions (1899). The studies of Worthington C. Ford 
have given John Quincy Adams a much larger share in 
formulating the Monroe Doctrine than earlier histo- 
rians have accorded him. The origin of President Mon- 
roe's message is traced by Mr. Ford in "Some Original 
Documents on the Genesis of the Monroe Doctrine," 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 329 

in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, 1902, and the subject is treated at greater 
length by him in The American Historical Review, vols. 
VII and VIII. The later evolution and application of 
the Monroe Doctrine may be followed in Herbert 
Kraus's Die Monroedolctrin in ihren Beziehungen zur 
Amerikanischen Diplomatic und zum Volkerrecht (1913), 
a work which should be made more accessible to Amer- 
ican readers by translation. 

CHAPTER XV 

The subjects touched upon in this closing chapter 
are treated with great skill by Frederick J. Turner in 
his Rise of the New West (1906). On the slavery con- 
troversy, an article by J. A. Woodburn, "The His- 
torical Significance of the Missouri Compromise," in 
the Report of the iVmerican Historical Association for 
1893, and an article by F. H. Hodder, "Side Lights on 
the Missouri Compromise," in the Report for 1909, 
may be read with profit. D. R, Dewey's Financial 
History of the United States (1903) and F. W. Taussig's 
Tariff History of the United States (revised edition, 
1914) are standard manuals. Edward Stanwood's 
History of the Presidency, 2 vols. (1916), contains the 
statistics of presidential elections. T. H. Benton's 
Thirty Years* View; or, A History of the Working of 
American Government, 1820-1850, 2 vols. (1854-56), be- 
comes an important source of information on congres- 
sional matters. The latter years of Jefferson's life are 
described by Randall and the closing years of John 
Adams's career by Charles Francis Adams. 



INDEX 



Acadian settlements iu Louisi- 
ana, 78-79 

Adams, Henry, on Carlos IV 
of Spain, 61; on Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, 63; on war in 
Santo Domingo, 71; History 
of the United States, cited 
123 (note), 137 (note); 
quoted, 142, 156; on British 
orders-in-council, 157 

Adams, John, 1, 5; votes for 
Monroe, 308; and Jefferson, 
316-17; death (1826), 317 

Adams, J. Q., on Jefferson's 
hospitality, 17; on Jefferson, 
28; peace commissioner, 241 
et seq.\ Minister to Russia, 
241; personal characteristics, 
241-42; and Gallatin, 242, 
254; at Ghent, 246 et seq.; 
quoted, 251; Secretary of 
State. 267; and De Onis, 
268, 275, 279, 281; action in 
regard to Florida, 269-85, 
291, 292; on Monroe, 276; 
and South American revolu- 
tions, 288, 291; and Oregon 
question, 293-94; Bering Sea 
controversy, 295-96; and 
Cuba, 296-97; part in form- 
ing foreign policy, 300-05; 
electoral vote for, 308 

Adams, Dr. William, British 
commissioner at Ghent, 247 

Alexander, Czar, and Holy 
Alliance, 286 

Alston, Joseph, husband of 
Theodosia Burr. 118 



Amelia Island (Florida), illicit 
commerce at, 165, 270; in- 
surgents at, 270, 271; United 
States troops occupy, 271, 
274; troops withdrawn, 273; 
Adams asks guarantees for, 
275 

Ames, Fisher, quoted, 24 

Amiens, Peace of, 62 

Anderson, D. R., " The Insur- 
gents of 1811," cited, 206 
(note) 

Argus (ship), 51 

Armstrong, General John, suc- 
ceeds Livingston at Paris, 
96; on the embargo, 167; 
Cadore's letter to, 178; 
Secretary of War, 219; res- 
ignation, 231 

Army, Jefferson's policy, 27; 
increase of, 166, 224; de- 
pendency upon militia, 225; 
number of forces, 228; see 
also Militia 

Arnold, Benedict, Burr serves 
under, 106 

Aury, General, buccaneer in 
East Florida, 274 

Bagot, British Minister, 277, 

278 
Bainbridge, Captain William, 

mission for Algiers, 35-37; 

in Tripolitan War, 40-43, 

50; prisoner, 42-43, 55. 58, 

128; quoted, 128 
Baltimore, Armstrong resigns 

at, 231 



331 



sn 



INDEX 



Baring, Alexander, friend of 
Gallatin, 240, 243 

Barron, Commodore Samuel, 
commands American squad- 
ron against Tripoli, 51, 55- 
56, 57, 58; commands the 
Chesapeake, 139, 140, 141; 
Canning demands disavowal 
of conduct of, 164 

Baton Rouge, location and 
population, 79; American 
settlers in, 191; "self-govern- 
ment movement," 192; fort 
taken by revolutionists, 
193 

Bayard, J. A., Envoy Extra- 
ordinary to Russia, 239, 
240-41, 244; peace com- 
missioner at Ghent, 248, 
251. 252 

Bayonne decree (Apr. 17, 1808), 
166-67 

Bayou Sara, insurrection starts 
at, 192 

Bayou Vermilion, 79 

Bering Sea controversy, 295 

Berkeley, Admiral, orders 
Chesapeake searched for de- 
serters, 138, 139, 104, 187 

Biddle, Madison asks loan of, 
315 

Bishop, Abraham, son of 
Samuel, 25 

Bishop, Samuel, appointed 
Collector of Port of New- 
Haven, 25 

Bladensburg, battle of, 229, 255 

Blennerhassett, Harman, and 
Burr, 115. 117-19, 120 

Blockade, of Tripoli, 39; of 
New York Harbor, 136-37; 
of French channel ports, 
153, 156-57; Napoleon's de- 
cree, 153 

Bonaparte, Joseph, Napoleon's 
attempt to place on Spanish 
throne, 190 

Boundaries, of Louisiana Pur- 
chase. 76-77, 87-90; sug- 



gested for Indian territory, 
249; in Ghent treaty, 264 

Bramble (British schooner), 
227 

Brown, Mrs., wife of Senator 
from Kentucky, and Jefifer- 
son's democracy, 1 

Burr, Aaron, 18, 28, 145; at 
Jefferson's inauguration, 3- 
4; leader of Republican 
faction in New York, 26, 
107, 110; life, 105 et seq.; 
political career, 107-12; and 
Hamilton, 28, 107, 110-12; 
intimates of, 113; journey to 
New Orleans, 114-15; con- 
spiracy, 115 et seq.; trial, 
127; bibliography, 323-24 

Burr, Theodosia, daughter of 
Aaron, 107, 118 

Cabinet, Jefferson's, 7-8, 10; 
Madison's, 172-73, 183, 216- 
217, 218-19, 231; Monroe's, 
267-68 

Cadore, Due de, French Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs, 178, 
179 

Calhoun, J. C, on House Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, 
199-200; quoted, 202; intro- 
duces bill declaring war on 
Great Britain, 211-12; opin- 
ion of the war, 213-14, 232; 
in the ruined Capitol, 232; 
Secretary of War, 267 

Cambrian (British frigate), 
136 

Campbell, G. W., Secretary of 
Treasury, 234 

Canada, boundary arbitration 
provided for, 264 

Canning, George. American 
statesmen contrasted with, 
10; and Chesapeake affair, 
150, 151, 152, 163, 164; and 
Erskine, 174; and Cuba, 
296; question of recognition 
of South American republics. 



INDEX 



33S 



Canning, George — Continued 
297-98, 300-01; Adams' ans- 
wer to, 302 

Canning, Stratford, British 
Minister at Washington, 
293 

Carlos IV of Spain, Henry 
Adams on, 61; cedes Louisi- 
ana to France, 61-62, 67; 
action in regard to Floridas, 
89 

Carondelet. Spanish Governor 
in Louisiana, 72 

Casa Calvo, Marquis de, and 
transfer of Louisiana to 
France, 86; in New Orleans, 
104 

Castlereagh, Lord, British 
statesman, 227, 244, 245, 
247, 249, 253, 290 

Cevallos, Spanish Foreign 
Minister, 94, 96 

Channing, Edward, History of 
the United States, cited, 68 
(note) 

Chase, Justice Samuel, 
impeachment, 32-33 

Cheves, Langdon, chairman of 
House Committee on Naval 
AflFairs, 200, 232 

Chesapeake (American frigate), 
British deserters on, 138; 
Berkeley's order to search, 
138-39, 140; and the Leop- 
ard, 139-42, 149, 159, 204, 
211; settlement of affair, 
150-51, 152, 163-65, 184, 
185, 187 

Claiborne, William, Governor 
of Mississippi Territory, 
86-87, 115; rule in Louisi- 
ana, 102; and Wilkinson, 
125; and Florida, 191, 192, 
194 

Clark, Daniel, merchant in 
New Orleans, 115 

Clay, Henry, counsel for Burr, 
119; in Senate, 195-96; on 
occupation of Florida, 196; 



quoted, 197-98; Speaker of 
House, 199, 200; on acquisi- 
tion of territory, 20.5-06; 
attitude toward the war, 208, 
209, 213, 214; and Randolph, 
209-10; peace commissioner, 
228, 232, 244-45, 246, 251, 
260, 261, 263; refuses Secre- 
taryship of War, 267; and 
South American revolutions, 
287-88 

Clinton, DeWitt, against Burr, 
26; and Madison, 223; elect- 
oral vote for, 224 (note) 

Clinton, George, Governor of 
New York, 108; Vice-Presi- 
dent, 112; candidate for 
Presidency, 172 

Cockburn, Admiral Sir George, 
in Washington, 229 

Colombia, Republic of. United 
States recognizes, 293; 
Russia refuses to recognize, 
295 

Colonization Society, 310 

Congress, Jefferson's influence 
on, 32; President's report on 
Louisiana, 78; debate on 
Louisiana Purchase, 82; Mo- 
bile Act, 91-92; vote on 
Florida question, 101; act 
establishing territorial gov- 
ernment in Louisiana, 103; 
Non-Importation, 147, 160; 
Embargo Act, 161, 313; 
acts supplementary to Em- 
bargo, 165-66; Non-Inter- 
course Act, 168-69, 174, 178, 
181, 313; Macon's Bill No. 
2, 177, 178; end of Eleventh, 
180-81; Twelfth, 198, 206; 
personnel of Committees, 
199-200 

Connecticut, militia with- 
drawn from national service, 
232; appoints delegates to 
Hartford Convention, 234 

Conrad's boarding house, 
Jefferson at, 1-2, 7 



334 



INDEX 



Constellation (American frig- 
ate), 54 

Constitution, Jefferson drafts 
amendment to, 81; amend- 
ments proposed by Hartford 
Convention, 237 

Constitution, in Tripoli, 48; 
and Guerriere, 226 

Continuous voyage, doctrine 
of, 134-35; British order-in- 
council on, 154-55 

Conway cabal, 113 

Corwin, E. S., John Marshall 
and the Constitution, cited, 
31 (note), 127 (note) 

Crawford, W. H., Senator from 
Georgia on Eustis, 216; 
Secretary of Treasury, 267 

Creoles in Louisiana, 85; dele- 
gation to Washington, 103 

Crowninshield, B. W., Secre- 
tary of Navy, 267 

Cuba, Jefferson raises question 
of, 189-90; Clay on, 196; 
as cause of international 
concern, 296-97 

Cumberland Road, 312 

Dale, Commodore Richard, 
commands in Mediterranean, 
38, 39 

Dallas, A. J., on Armstrong, 
219-20; Secretary of Treas- 
ury, 234 

Dayton, Jonathan, intimate of 
Burr, 113, 115, 116 

Davidson, The North West 
Company, cited, 206 (note) 

Dearborn, Henry, Secretary of 
War, 8; outrages in York 
under, 230 (note) 

Decatur, Stephen, 57; burning 
of the Philadelphia, 44-46 

Democratic party, see Republi- 
can party 

Derne, Eaton's expedition at, 
52, 53, 54; evacuated, 56 

Detroit, Hull's surrender at, 
217, 226 



Dickinson, John, Jefferson's 

letter to, 19 
Duane, William, appointed 

Adjutant-General, 219 
Dwight, Theodore, opposition 

to administration, 25 

East Florida, as menace to 
southern frontier, 198; ques- 
tion of occupation of, 269-76; 
see also Florida, west Florida 

Eaton, AVilliam, consul at 
Tunis, 50-53, 55, 58 

Edward (ship), 159 

Edwards, Jonathan, grand- 
father of Burr, 106 

Embargo, 207-08; Jefferson 
recommends, 160; Embargo 
Act, 161-63, 165-68 

Enterprise (schooner), 33, 38, 
44, 58 

Erskine, D. M., British Minis- 
ter, drafts note, 173 

Essex (American frigate), 56; 
decision, 134, 135 

Eustis, William, Secretary of 
War, 216-17; resigns, 218 

Federalist party, and Republi- 
cans, 5, 6; in Federal offices, 
22-23; in New England, 24- 
26, 30, 109-10, 111; at 
Hartford Convention, 235- 
236 

Ferdinand VII of Spain, 190; 
insurgents in West Florida 
assert allegiance to, 192 

Finance, Jefferson's plans for 
economy, 26-28, 30-31; 
Eleventh Congress and, 181; 
Congress declares loan, 202- 
203; Gallatin appeals for 
taxes, 202, 221; Govern- 
ment faces bankruptcy, 234 

Fisheries question, 259, 260, 
261 

Florida Treatv, 282-84, 290- 
291, 292-93 



INDEX 



335 



Floridas, Talleyrand urges 
cession of, 60; United States 
envoys try to buy from 
France, 69; Jefferson and, 
189; bibliography, 326; see 
also East Florida, West 
Florida 

Folch, Spanish Governor of 
West Florida, 104, 193 

Foster, A. J., British Minister 
at Washington, 184-85 

France, see Louisiana, Napo- 
leon, Shipping 

Fulton, Robert, Jefferson's 
letter to, 12 

Gallatin, Albert, Secretary of 
Treasury. 10, 173; and Jeffer- 
son, 10, 19, 20-22; policy of 
government, 21-2i?-; and 
Burr, 26; on preparation for 
war, 158-59; and embargo, 
160, 168; on acts for in- 
spection and regulation of 
ports, 165; Madison and, 
172, 176; tenders resig- 
nation, 182; Madison refuses 
to accept resignation, 183; 
appeal for taxes, 202, 221; 
opinion of colleagues in 
Cabinet, 217, 219; and 
Duane, 219; ability and 
accomplishments, 220; En- 
voy Extraordinary to Russia, 
239-40; personal character- 
istics, 240; and Bayard, 241; 
and Adams, 242; nomi- 
nation as envoy rejected by 
Senate, 243-44; on Peace 
commission, 244-45; at 
Ghent, 246 et seq.; describes 
British commission, 247; 
bibliography, 321 

Gallatin, Mrs., 15; Mrs. Madi- 
son's letter to, 226 

Gallatin, James, son of Albert, 
at Ghent, 246, 262; A Great 
Peace Maker, quoted, 262 

Gambier, Admiral Lord, Brit- 



ish commissioner at Ghent, 
247, 248 

Gates, General, supports 
Jefferson in plan for navy, 
158 

Genet, Edmond, mission to 
United States, 59 

George Washington (frigate), 
pressed by Algiers, 35-37 

Georgia, and East Florida, 
272 _ 

Germans in Louisiana, 78 

Ghent, peace commissioners 
at, 245-47; negotiations, 
247-64; treaty, 263-64; 
bibliography of negoti- 
r tions. 327 

Giles, W. B., 18, 173 

Girard, Stephen, and the 
Liberty, 154; aids govern- 
ment loan, 221 

Goulburn, Henry, British com- 
missioner at Ghent, 247 

Great Britain, Oregon question, 
293-94; and Cuba, 296-97; 
and recognition of South 
American republics, 297- 
301; see also Chesapeake, 
Ghent negotiations, Ship- 
pii;g, War of 1812 

Great Lakes, British demands 
concerning, 250 

Greenville, Treaty of, 249 

Griswold, Roger, 109, 110 

Grundy, Felix, on House Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations, 
200; on acquisition of terri- 
tory, iiOl-02; on British 
intrigue with Indians, 207; 
at the ruined Capitol, 232 

Guerriere, 185, 186; and Con- 
stitution, 226 

Hail Columbia, played in con- 
cert halls of Ghent, 246 
Hall, Basil, quoted, 136-37 
Hamet Karamanli, heir to 
Tripolitan throne, 38, 51- 
53 



336 



INDEX 



Hamilton, Alexander, Federal- 
ist leader, 5; and Burr, 
28, 107, 110-12 

Hamilton, Paul, Secretary of 
Navy, 217 

Harrison, W. H., at Tippe- 
canoe, 207 

Hartford Convention, 234-37 

Holmes, Governor of Mis- 
sissippi, 191-92 

Holy Alliance, 286, 295, 301 

Horizon (ship), 155 

Hull, Captain Isaac on Eaton's 
expedition, 51 

Hull, General William, sur- 
render at Detroit, 217, 
226 

Iberville River, 79; Louisiana 
extends to, 89 

Impressment of seamen, 130- 
133, 136 

Indians, Tecumseh's conspir- 
acy, 206-07; territory de- 
manded at Ghent for, 248- 
249; Seminoles in Florida, 
277 

Internal improvements. Gov- 
ernment attitude toward, 
312 

Intrepid (ketch), destroys 
Philadelphia, 44-46; blown 
up, 49-50 

Israel, Lieutenant Joseph, on 
the Intrepid, 49 

Jackson, General Andrew, 
Burr and, 115; letter to 
Claiborne, 125; repulse of 
British before New Orleans, 
238; Florida expedition, 277, 
278, 279; bibliography. 328 

Jackson, F. J., British Minister 
to United States, 175-77 

Jefferson, Thomas, democratic 
spirit, 1-2, 17; appearance, 
3, 9, lG-17; Inaugural Ad- 
dress, 4-7, 20; Cabinet, 7-8, 



10; and Madison, 8 10, 194, 
216; interests, 11-13; social 
life at Washington, 13-17; 
letter to Dickinson, 19; 
policy of government, 20, 21, 
22; cooperation with Gal- 
latin and Madison, 20-22; 
appointments, 22-23; hostil- 
ity of New England toward, 
23-26, 30; first message to 
Congress, 26-32, 33, 38; and 
Bainbridge, 37; and Tripoli- 
tan War, 54; and Mississippi 
problem, 66; appoints Mon- 
roe as Minister Plenipotenti- 
ary, 68-69; and Louisiana, 
77-82; on Florida claims, 
89-90, 97, 189-90; and Mo- 
bile Act, 91-92; message to 
Congress on Spanish negoti- 
ations, 97-98, 99, 117, 121; 
autocratic rule over Louisi- 
ana, 102; and Burr, 107-08, 
109, 119-20; and Wilkin- 
son, 123, 191; on right of 
expatriation, 133; and Chesa- 
peake affair, 142-43; as a 
pacifist, 142, 144- 49, 157-58. 
162; special message to Con- 
gress (Feb. 10, 1807), 158; 
message to Congress recom- 
mending embargo, 160; and 
the embargo, 160, 161, 162- 
163, 166, 168; abdication as 
party leader, 168; at Madi- 
son's Inaugural Ball, 172; 
and War of 1812, 215; on 
Madison's choice of execu- 
tives, 218; and the army, 
233; Bayard responsible for 
election of, 241; on J. Q. 
Adams, 267; foreign policy, 
299; on Missouri com- 
promise, 309, 310; at Monti- 
cello, 31; financial difficulty, 
315; later life, 316; and 
Adams, 316-17; death 
(1826), 317; bibliography, 
320. 321 



INDEX 



337 



Jefferson, Martha, daughter of 

Thomas, quoted, 169 
Jones, William, Secretary of 

Navy, 219 
Judiciary Act of 1891, 31 

(note) 

King, Ruf us, electoral vote for. 
266 (note) 

Land, depreciation of, 313 

Lassus, de, Spanish Com- 
mandant in West Florida, 
192, 193 

Laussat, P. C, in Louisiana, 
83-84, 85, 86, 93 

Law, John, Mississippi Bubble, 
78 

Leander (British frigate), 136, 
137 

Lear, Colonel Tobias, Ameri- 
can Consul-General at Al- 
giers, 55; negotiates treaty 
with Tripoli, 56 

Leclerc, General, in Santo 
Domingo, 64, 67-68; death, 
68, 70 

Leipzig, Battle of. 227, 243 

Leopard and Chesapeake, 139- 
142, 151; see also Chesapeake 

Lewis, Meriwether, explores 
Missouri, 77 

Liberty, Gerard's ship, 154 

Lincoln, Levi, Attorney-Gen- 
eral, 8 

Lingelbach, W. E., on Essex 
decision, 136 (note) 

Little Belt, attack on, 186-87 

Liverpool, Lord, on continu- 
ing war, 258 

Livingston, R. R., Minister to 
France, 66; Monroe acts 
with, 68-69, 149; and Napo- 
leon, 69-70; bargains with 
Talleyrand for Louisiana, 73- 
74: purchase agreed upon, 
75; knowledge of extent of 
Louisiana, 76-77; urges haste 
in concluding purchase, 81; 



and Florida claims, 87, 88; 
succeeded by Armstrong, 96 

Louisiana, France obtains 
cession of, 60-62, 67; Jeffer- 
son's interest in, 66; threat 
of quarrel over, 66-67; Mon- 
roe goes to France to act 
regarding, 68-69; Napoleon 
decides to sell, 69-73; nego- 
tiations, 73-75; purchase 
executed, 75, 76; extent of 
purchase, 76-80; debate on 
treaty, 82; France takes 
possession, 83-84, 86; formal 
surrender to United States, 
87; Florida claimed to be 
part of, 87-91; effect on New 
England of annexation of, 
109; bibliography, 322-23 

L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 62- 
64 

McCaleb, W. F., Aaron Burr 
Conspiracy, cited, 123 (note) 

MacGregor, Gregor, buccaneer, 
273-74 

McKee, Colonel John, agent 
sent to Florida, 269-70 

Maclay, Senator, on Jeffer- 
son's appearance, 17 

Macon, Nathaniel, Speaker of 
House, 18, 32 

Macon's Bill No. 2, 177. 
178 

Madison, James, Secretary of 
State, 8-9; and Jefferson, 9- 
10, 18, 20-21. 172, 216, 218; 
personal characteristics, 18; 
philosophy of, 19; Living- 
ston's report to, 74, 89; on 
Florida claims, 89; and 
Yrujo, 92-93; Spanish nego- 
tiations, 96; delays sending 
Florida purchase bill to 
Armstrong, 149-50; on em- 
bargo, 160, 162, 168; nego- 
tiations with Rose, 163, 164; 
elected President, 168; In- 
augural Address, 170-71; 



338 



INDEX 



Madison, James — Continued 
Inaugural Ball, 171-72; 
Cabinet, 172-73, 183, 21G- 
217, 218-19, 231; negoti- 
ations with Erskine, 173-74; 
renews Non-Intercourse, 174, 
179; and F. J. Jackson, 
175, 176-77; lack of vigorous 
leadership. 180, 207-08, 215; 
message (1810), 180-81; and 
West Florida, 189, 191, 194, 
195, 198; and East Florida, 
198; message (Nov. 5, 1811), 
200-01; renominated, 208- 
209; war message, 210-11; 
signs bill declaring war, 212; 
break from Jeffersonian 
tradition, 213; on the war, 
215; and Gallatin, 220; 
enemies of, 221-24; electoral 
vote for, 224 (note); and 
state rights, 225-26; difficul- 
ties of 1812, 226; at invasion 
of Washington, 229-30; re- 
turns to Capitol, 231; mes- 
sage, 232-33; Wirt on, 235- 
236; and Hartford Conven- 
tion, 236, 237; secret mes- 
sage to Congress (Jan. 3, 
1811). 269; and East Florida, 
269, 270, 273; foreign policy, 
299; on recognition of South 
American republics, 300; and 
slavery, 310; at Montpelier, 
314; financial difficulty, 315; 
death (1836), 315; bibliog- 
raphy, 321 

Madison, Mrs. Dolly, hostess 
for Jefferson, 14, 15; at In- 
augural Ball, 171; letter to 
Mrs. Gallatin, 226; at Brit- 
ish invasion of Washington, 
229, 230 

Marbois. Barbe, and purchase 
of Louisiana, 72-73, 74, 
75 

Marshall, John, at Jefferson's 
inauguration, 4 

Matthews, General George. 



agent to Florida. 269-70; at 
Amelia Island. 270. 271. 272 

Mazzei. Philip, friend of Jeffer- 
son, 3 

Mediterranean Fund. 39 

Melampus (British frigate), 
deserters on Chesapeake, 
138; searches American ves- 
sels, 185 

Merry, Anthony. British Min- 
ister at Washington, and 
Jefferson's etiquette. 14-16; 
and Burr, 115 

Metternich, Prince, and Holy 
Alliance, 286 

Mexican Association, 104 

Mexico, American dreams of 
conquest of, 104-05, 117; 
Wilkinson writes Viceroy of, 
124 

Milan decree (Dec. 17, 1807), 
157, 178; see also Shipping, 
Neutral 

Militia, request for readiness, 
142; New England's action 
in War of 1812, 232 

Miranda, revolutionist, 117 

Mississippi Bubble. /8 

Mississippi River, navigationof, 
65; closed by Spain to west- 
ern commerce. 68; question 
of navigation in Ghent nego- 
tiations, 259, 260, 261, 262 

Mississippi Valley, effect of 
settlement on East. 313 

Missouri Compromise (1820), 
309 

Mobile Act, 91-92; Yrujo pro- 
tests, 92-93; President's in- 
terpretation of, 93; Cevallos 
and, 94-95 

Mobile River, American ship- 
ping obstructed on, 97; see 
also Mobile Act 

Monroe, James, Minister 
Plenipotentiary to France 
and Spain, 68-69; Louisiana 
negotiations. 73, 74-75, 81; 
on extent of Louisiana, 76, 



INDEX 



339 



Monroe, James — Continued 
87-88, 104; Minister to Eng- 
land. 90; West Florida nego- 
tiations, 90-91, 94-96; and 
Chesapeake affair, 143, 150- 
151; Britishnegotiations,148, 
150; diplomatic career, 149, 
265; leaves England, 152; 
Secretary of State. 183-84; 
and the war, 207, 215; esti- 
mate of colleagues in Cabi- 
net, 217; and western cam- 
paign, 218; President's plans 
for, 218, 219; Castlereagh 
offers direct negotiations, 
227; Secretary of War, 231, 
233; Gallatin's letter to, 
253; elected President, 265- 
266; Cabinet, 267-68; and 
Jackson's Florida expedition, 
278; on recognition of South 
American republics, 289, 291, 
293, 298-99; influenced by 
Jefferson and Madison, 299, 
301-02; message to Congress 
(Dec. 2, 1823), 304, 305-07; 
second election to Presi- 
dency, 308; and national 
affairs, 310-11; at Oak Hill. 
314; death (1831), 310; 
bibliography. 328 
Monroe "Doctrine,"' Adams 
formulates, 303-05; Mon- 
roe's expression. 305-06; 
Rush on, 307; bibliography, 
328-29 
Monticello, Jefferson's home, 

2. 7, 10-11, 314, 316 
Montpelier, Madison's home, 

175. 217, 314 
Morales, Spanish official, 104 
Morning Post, quoted, 153 
Morris, Gouverneur, 107 
Morris, Captain R. V., com- 
mands Mediterranean squad- 
ron, 39; suspended, 40 

Napoleon, American states- 
men contrasted with, 10; 



secures cession of Louisiana 
from Spain, 58-62, 67; and 
Santo Domingo, 62-64. 67- 
68.70; colonial policy, 62-65, 
67-C8, 69-73; cedes Louisi- 
ana to United States, 72-75; 
and the Floridas, 88-89, 
189-90; controls Central 
Europe, 152; Berlin decree, 
152-53, 159, 178; Bayonne 
decree, 166-67; Milan decree, 
157, 178; Madison and, 179; 
attempt to subdue Spain, 
190; defeat at Leipzig, 227, 
243; Europe rid of, 264 

National Intelligencer, quoted, 
173 

Naturalization, Jefferson's rec- 
ommendation to Congress, 
32 

Navy, American, Jefferson 
and, 27, 185; see al-<o Tripoli- 
tan War, War of 1812 

Navy, British, life on board 
ship, 129; press gangs, 130- 
131 

Nelson, Admiral, and British 
navy, 129 

Nemours. Dupont de, and 
Louisiana negotiations, 66 

Neptune (American ship), 239, 
241. 242 

Neutral shipping, aee Shipping, 
Neutral 

Neuville, Hyde de, French 
Minister at Washington, 
281 

New England, hostility toward 
Jefferson, 23-26, 30; Feder- 
alist intrigues in, 109-10,' 
disaffection (1812). 226, 
232-33; Hartford Conven- 
tion, 234-38; bibliography of 
Federalism in, 326-27 

New Haven, Jefferson's ap- 
pointment of Collector of 
Port of, 23. 25 

New Orleans, Sp;inish intrnd- 
ant suspends right of deposit 



340 



INDEX 



New Orleans — Continued 
at, 68; aim of envoys to pro- 
cure, 69; as part of Louisi- 
ana, 78; Laussat at, 84-85; 
Burr's visit to, 114-15; 
Wilkinson and, 124, 125, 
126; Jackson's victory at. 
238 

Niagara, Fort, British propose 
cession of, 250 

Nicholas. Governor W. C, 
Jefferson and, 315 

Nicholson, Joseph, and im- 
peachment of Chase, 33 

Non-Importation, 160; Bill of 
April 18, 1806, 147 

Non-Intercourse Act, 168-69, 
174, 178, 179, 181, 313 

Nootka Sound affair, 66 

Northweyt, British demand for 
neutralization of, 249-50 

Oak Hill, Monroe's home, 314, 
316 

Onis, Luis de, Spanish Minis- 
ter, and Adams, 268; pro- 
tests East Florida . occu- 
pation, 275; negotiations, 
276, 281-84. 292; and Jack- 
son's expedition, 277, 278, 
279 

Opelousas, part of Louisiana, 
79 

Oregon question, 293-94 

Orleans Gazette, quoted, 121 

Pacifists of 1807, 144 et seq. 

Paine, Thomas, and Jefferson, 
12; New England's opinion 
of, 25 

"Palace, The," name for 
President's House, 7 

Paris, Peace of, 205 

Parish, helps government loan, 
221 

Pensacola (Florida), Seminole 
Indians capture. 277 

Perceval. Spencer, British Pre- 
mier, 212 



Perrv, O. H., victory on Lake 

Erie, 227 

Philadelphia (American frig- 
ate), captured by Tripoli- 
tans, 40-41; rescued, 42-43; 
destroyed by Americans, 43- 
46 

Pichon, L. A., French Minister, 
15 

Pickering, Judge, impeach- 
ment, 33 

Pickering, Timothy, threatens 
secession of Northern States, 
109, 110 

Pinckney, Charles, Jefferson 
and, 7, 18; Minister to Spain, 
69, 90, 93-94, 95 

Pinkney, William, special en- 
voy to Great Britain, 148, 
149, 151; Minister at Court 
of St. James, 152; and 
American embargo, 166; on 
Jackson, 175 

Pizarro, Spanish Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, 280 

Plumer, Senator from New 
Hampshire, on Jefferson's 
hospitality, 17 

Pontalba, memoir advising 
Napoleon about Louisiana, 
71-72, 105 

Porter, P. B., on House Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations, 
199; on acquisition of terri- 
tory, 201 

Portugal, Napoleon occupies, 
157 

Preble, Commodore Edward, 
51, 57; commands squad- 
ron in Mediterranean, 40, 
58; Bainbridge corresponds 
with, 42, 128; plan to de- 
stroy Philadelphia, 43, 44; 
attack on Tripoli, 47-50 

Preparedness, 157-59, 202- 
203 

President (American frigate), 
Liflle Belt affair, 186-87 

Prevost, Sir George, invasion 



INDEX 



341 



Prevost, Sir George — Continued 

of New York, 232; retreat to 

Canada, 255 
Priestley, Dr. Joseph, Jefferson 

and. 3, 11 
Prussia, Napoleon's overthrow 

of, 152 

Quincy, Josiah, 221; on Madi- 
son's Cabinet, 219 

Randolph, John, Jefferson and, 
18, 32; chairman of House 
Committee on Ways and 
Means, 32; on Florida claims, 
90; opposition to Florida 
programme, 100-01; on 
Jefferson's proclamation, 
143; opposition to non- 
importation, 147; Monroe 
and, 152, 172; contest with 
Clay over war, 209-10 

Randolph, Mrs., at Monti - 
cello, 314 

Ratford, Jenkin, British desert- 
er, 138, 142 

Republican party, and Feder- 
alists, 5, 6; and preparedness. 
202 

Revenge brings European news, 
159 

Rhode Island appoints dele- 
gate to Hartford Conven- 
tion, 234 

Rochambeau succeeds Leclerc 
in Santo Domingo, 70 

Rodgers, Commodore John, in 
the President, 186 

Rose, George, British special 
envoy, 163-64 

Roumanzoff, Count, Russian 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
242 

Rush, Dr. Benjamin, Jefferson 
and, 11 

Rush, Richard, American 
Minister to Great Britain, 
297, 298, 300; quoted, 307 



Russell, Jonathan, peace com- 
missioner, 228, 244, 251 

Russia, Great Britain declines 
mediation of, 227, 242; 
American envoys to, 239; 
closes Bering Sea, 295; and 
recognition of South Ameri- 
can republics, 295; Adams's 
communications to, 295-96, 
301-02, 303-04 

Sackett's Harbor, British pro- 
pose cession of, 250 

St. Clair, General Arthur, 
Wilkinson under, 114 

Salem Register quoted, 134 

Salcedo, J. M., de, Spanish 
Governor, delivers Louisiana 
to French, 86 

San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 62 

Santo Domingo, French in, 62- 
63. 64, 67 

Seminole Indians, uprising in 
Florida, 277 

Shipping, American, Tripoli- 
tan depredations, 33; British 
and French depredations, 54; 
obstructed on Mobile River, 
97; see also Mississippi River 

Shipping, Neutral, 134-35, 
153-57; see also Impressment 

Siren (brig), sails with In- 
trepid, 44 

Slavery, Missouri Compromise, 
309; Jefferson's and Madi- 
son's opinions of, 310 

Smith, John, Senator from 
Ohio, and Burr, 113, 115 

Smith, Mrs. Margaret Bayard, 
on Dolly Madison, 171; on 
hospitality at Montpelier, 
314 

Smith, Robert, Secretary of 
Navy, 8; Secretary of State, 
173, 176; dismissed, 183 

Smith, Samuel, of Maryland, 
8, 173 

Somers, Captain Richard on 
Intrepid, 4i9-50, 57 



342 



INDEX 



South America, revolutions in, 
iSG-87; Clay and, 287-88; 
Adams and, 288; question of 
recognition, 289, 290 et 
seq.; bibliography. 328 

Spain, cession of Louisiana to 
France, 58-62, 67; Monroe's 
mission to, 91, 94-97, 205; 
declares war with England. 
96; Jefferson's message 
threatens war with, 97-98; 
Jefferson's special message, 
99; Napoleon attempts to 
subdue, 190; West Florida 
revolts from, 190; see also 
East Florida, Louisiana, 
Treaties, West Florida 

Stael, Madame de, friend of 
Gallatin, 240 

Swartwouts, Burr and, 113 

Talleyrand, American states- 
men compared with, 10; 
French Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, 59; and Louisiana, 
60, 67; negotiates with 
Livingston, 73; on Louisiana 
boundaries, 76-77, 87; Mon- 
roe and, 91 

Taxation, .see Finance 

Tecumseh, Indian confeder- 
ation, 206-07 

Texas, Livingston urges seiz- 
ure of, 96; Spanish intrigue 
in, 104 

Thames, Battle of the, 227^ 

Thurston, Senator from Ken- 
tucky, Clav serves out term 
of, 195 

Times, London, quoted, 154 

Treaties, Treaty with Tripoli, 
56; Treaty of San Ildefonso, 
62; treaty with Spain (1795), 
65, 114, 279; negotiations 
with Great Britain, 148-49, 
151-52; Peace of Paris, 205; 
Treaty of Greenville, 249; 
Florida treaty, 282-84, 290- 
291, 292-93; see also Ghent 



Tripolitan War, 38 et seq.; 
depredations on American 
shipping, 33; tribute, 38; 
Pasha of Tripoli, 38; bibli- 
ography, 321 

Tuyll, Baron de, Russian Min- 
ister, Adams's communi- 
cations with, 215, 301-02, 
303 

Van Buren, Martin, campaign 
manager for Clinton, 223 

\ ermont. Governor refuses to 
call militia, 232 

V ictor. General, French com- 
mander, 83 

Vives, General, Spanish, 290. 
291, 292, 293 

Wadsworth, Lieutenant Henry 
on the Intrepid, 49 

War of 1812, demand for war, 
189 et seq.; Madison's part 
in, 213 et seq.; making of 
peace, 239 et seq.; bibli- 
ography, 324-25 

Washington, George, dignity 
of. 16; and Burr. 106, 107; 
Dolly Madison saves por- 
trait of. 229 

Washington (D. C), British 
invasion of, 229-30 

Wayne, Anthony, Wilkinson 
under, 114 

Webster, Daniel, memorial 
drafted by, 222 

Wellington, Duke of, on con- 
tinuation of war, 257-58 

West Feliciana, part of West 
Florida, 79 

West Florida, question of in- 
clusion in Louisiana Pur- 
chase, 87-90; Spanish in- 
trigue in, 104; revolt in. 190- 
193; annexation of, 194-95; 
Clay on occupation of, 196- 
198; see also East Florida, 
Floridas 

Whitney, Eli. Jefferson and. 12 



INDEX 



34S 



Whitworth, Lord, British Am- 
bassador to France, 70 

Wilkinson, General James, re- 
ceives Louisiana from 
French, 87; in Louisiana, 
102; and Burr's conspiracy, 
113, 115, 121. 122; character. 
114; communications with 
Washington. 120. 123, 124; 
deserts Burr, 123-26; arrives 
in New Orieans, 125; Jeffer- 
son and. 158, 191; occupies 
West Florida, 273 

Williams, David, chairman of 
House Committee on Mili- 
tary Affairs, 200 



Wilson, Woodrow, method of 
addressing Congress, 30 

Wirt. William, quoted, 235- 
236; Attorney-General, 267- 
268 

York (Toronto), General Dear- 
born burns public buildings, 
230 (note) 

Yrujo, C. M., Marquis, Span- 
ish Minister, and Jefferson's 
etiquette, 14-15; protests 
Mobile Act, 92-93, 94; Burr 
conspiracy revealed to, 116 

Yusuf, Pasha of Tripoli, 38, 
48 



/ 4*'' 



